there is much in these words of Christ, which is of deep concern to the rich, as well as to the poor. For who is the rich man that has received his consolation, and has nothing to hope for in the eternal life before him? Can a condition more pitiable than his be imagined? And who is the poor man, that may look with confidence to the eternal possessions of the kingdom of God in heaven? To obtain a part in his condition, even at the expence of a thousand worlds, would be unspeakable gain.

Why, then, was a blessing pronounced by our Lord Jesus Christ upon the poor? This is the question which I propose to answer.

To understand our Lord's language in the text, and in many other passages of his instructions, we must bring them into the light of the great doctrines and objects of his religion, respecting the immediate and final purposes of God in regard to the race, and each individual of it. Our Lord Jesus Christ speaks continually of man, and to men, as immortal beings; as beings of a common nature, who are placed in this world for trial, discipline, probation; and who are to seek their highest immediate good in that, which will be, to all who attain it, an eternally possessed, and an eternally increasing good. Jesus Christ never views. man merely as a creature of earth; a creature of a day, or of time. Every human being, as seen by him, has the capacities of an undying nature. Every human being is a subject of the moral government of God, must give account to him, and will be happy or miserable beyond the grave, according to the deeds done in the body. And the end of every allotment of God's

providence is, the piety and virtue of those who are the subjects of this providence; because, in this piety and virtue alone consists the true, the ever enduring, and ever enlarging happiness of immortal natures. Whatever, then, conduces to this piety and virtue,-in other words, to the knowledge, and love, and service of God; to the trust in him, and the submission to him, to which he calls us; whatever brings the soul to christian humility, and purity, and benevolence, and to the simplicity, fidelity and sanctity, which are the conditions and laws of the eternal blessedness of heaven, in the view of Jesus Christ, is good. It is good, because it conduces to the greatest possible good. It is happy, because it qualifies for perfect and eternal happiness. Nay, it is good, because it is itself the purest, and highest, and most perfect happiness of which man is capable. And whatever disqualifies for the pure and perfect enjoyment of God in heaven; that is, whatever represses, or checks, the love of God in the soul; whatever occasions confidence in ourselves, or the world, instead of raising our hearts to himself as the supreme object of trust; whatever inspires us with pride, or vanity, or leads us into the smallest injustice, or blunts our sensibility to the wants and sufferings of others; whatever causes us to forget our immortality and accountableness, or in any respect to live as immortal and accountable beings, under the influences of his religion, should not live; this, in the view of Jesus Christ, and of his whole Góspel, is evil. And it is as great an evil, as the consequences are great and terrible that may result from it. Into the light of these great, essential, elementary principles of our religion, we are then to bring riches and

poverty, health and sickness, power and weakness, and all the diversities which we find in the endowments and conditions of men, if we would reason and infer concerning them as Christians; if we would understand the language and sentiments of our Lord respecting them; if we would ourselves escape the woes, and obtain the blessings of his Gospel. Guided by these great principles, let us then inquire, why did Jesus Christ pronounce a blessing upon the poor?

I answer, and I think it is the answer of the spirit of the Gospel, that it was because he had brought a religion into the world, which was suited, as no other religion was, and as no mere human institutions could be, to all the wants, and sufferings, and interests of the poor; a religion, which, in proportion as it is understood, and received, and practised, will make, and cannot but make, the poor blessed, happy. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not come to banish poverty from the world. The causes of the inequality of property lie as deep in the principles of human nature, as those of the inequality of physical strength, or of intellectual capacity. Let his Gospel even be universally received, and universally be made the rule of life, and there will still be not only the comparatively ignorant, and weak, and poor, but there will be those too, who, from the want of judgment, and of ability in various respects, will be wholly dependent on the care and kindness of others. It is very far from being a design of Christianity, to interfere with the natural laws of the world. On the contrary, it recognizes these laws as institutions of God. Nor would it subvert the distinctions which are founded in these laws, or forbid any of the pursuits in which men may engage,

consistently with the maintenance of the piety and virtue which it teaches. It not only does not aim, therefore, at a suppression of commerce, and the mechanic arts; it not only would not mar the beautiful creations of genius in any of the departments of skill, or of taste; or confound the ruler with the subject, the employer with the employed, or the head which devises with the hands which execute; but it would make each of the diversities of condition so produced, to conduce to the perfection of the moral order and happiness of the world. It recognizes nothing as an evil, but sin; and it looks alone, in these respects, at the remedy, and the removal of the evils, which grow out of sin. It would recover men from all the ignorance, all the weakness, all the disease, all the poverty, and all the sufferings in every form, which are occasioned by violations of God's laws; or, in other words, by sin. The world, as Christianity would have it to be, is as full of action, of enterprise, of energy, as is the world in which God is forgotten, and in which every one is living for himself. But in the world, seen as our Lord Jesus Christ would make it, the poor would be raised to a condition, to which nothing short of his religion can raise them. He would show us that poverty, in the design of God, is as benevolent an appointment as riches. He would make the poor, in the best sense of the words, rich, powerful, wise, happy. It is asked, how? With the sentiment in the text in my mind, I will go among the poor. I will endeavor to feel what Christ felt, and to speak to them in the spirit of Christ. In this view of it, I think that we shall obtain one of the highest manifestations of the glory and excellence of

our religion, and one of the most satisfactory of its internal evidences, that it is from God.

I remark, then, first that Christianity is a religion adapted for the poor, and that it is an unspeakable blessing to the poor who receive it, and its doctrines respecting the character, government and purposes of God.

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I enter the room of a pious, poor family. widow with her three or four children. ness and apparent comfort around her. hardly suspect that want is felt here. she has not known in the morning how she should obtain provision for the day. Often she has felt great embarrassment and difficulty, to determine by what means she may be enabled to pay her rent at the close of the week. While she is in health, she can at best earn but five or six shillings, and sometimes but two or three, by the labors of a week. And when work fails her, or when her own, or the sickness of a child, takes her from her accustomed labors, she not only has additional wants, but is driven to the accumulation of debt. Yet she never desponds. I speak to her of God's goodness, and her heart overflows with gratitude. She feels that she has that within,-a love of God and of her Saviour, a trust, a hope, a peace, which she would not exchange for all external good. I have no language in which to express my sense of the privilege of learning, from her conversation and her life, the value and excellence of that religion, on which rest all the hopes of my own soul. Here I see the power of the doctrines of the gospel of Christ,-of the doctrines of God's parental character, and love, and designs,-to enlighten, to direct