equally barren? The fact is, that the many eminent blessings flowing to society from attention to this object, the magnitude and variety of public evils resulting from the neglect of it, the superior happiness, or superior misery of these our fellow creatures, according as they are early protected or abandoned, are all themes so completely worn out, so ground down, if I may use the expression, by repeated attrition, that I should consider it a manifest abuse of your indulgence, to trouble you with any of them. That your indulgence is great, I have long had reason to declare. I ought therefore to presume on that indulgence but as little as possible. There is a circumstance however, regarding your institution, which I am called on to mention; and which I do with the more confidence and willingness, as notwithstanding what my zeal for the cause I have in hand, may have induced me to say in the preceding part of this discourse, I know you are not unacquainted with it. When first I had the happiness of appearing in behalf of these children, their number consisted of thirty or thirty-two, I am not positive which: I took the liberty to remonstrate on the smallness of that number; you felt with what justice, and increased it to forty; there has it stood there, during a long term of eight years, has it stood and some of them such years! Great God! No not a single child has been added! As we stand in the presence of the eternal God, and hope for eternal life, how can this be justified? how can we reconcile it with the commonest feelings of humanity? how rest on our beds in peace, when we

reflect what it is in our power to do, and what we have omitted to do? what inexpressible happiness we might diffuse, what inexpressible happiness we have deliberately withheld? Is it in the want of means I am to seek for an apology? No: the question is mockery. We are beyond exception the wealthiest parish in the metropolis; and almost as well able to maintain any given number of orphans, as we are forty. What will you say when I tell you, that in the parish of St. Werburgh, a parish exclusively composed of tradesmen and shopkeepers, there are forty children dieted, clothed, and educated? Who can be ignorant of it? Who can be ignorant, that while God in his inscrutable judgment has spared you, he has afflicted thousands and thousands of your brethren. Who is to learn, that a long want of employment among your poor, added to the numbers that have engaged, or shed their blood in the public service, have caused orphans and destitute children to multiply in the most horrible proportion? Who so uncandid as to deny this fact? I tell you, did my words burn like coals of fire, they could not convey the greatness of the call upon you! No, never in justice, should a minister of mercy descend from this place, until he discovered by your countenances and emotions, that you felt the necessity, and were determined to the exercise of superior mercy at this day. I say, though I should continue to speak until my observations became incoherent, and language confused, there would be still a mode left of conveying the ardent wishes of my heart; you would understand at least my

tears; they are the true language of intreaty; and as long as there was one pulse of feeling within me for the world of perishing infants without these walls, these eyes should flow to soften and conjure you! What my friends! in the Old and New Testament, we see astonishing influences even of divine interposition in the day of calamity! Elijah on the top of a bleak and desert mountain; without any resource but a firm confidence in his God. Was he suffered to perish? No: even the most rapacious of birds was charged with the ministry of a protecting providence, and brought him his nutriment at morn and eve. And how did that vast multitude which Moses conducted into the wilderness, subsist during a course of forty years? The hand of divine mercy spread their food upon the earth, and gave them water from the body of a dry rock. Think of the five thousand people that followed and invoked Jesus Christ in the extremity of hunger and distress did he refuse to succour them? did he spurn them? No: the Gospel tells us expressly, that his heart bled for them. Where, says he, shall we find bread that they may eat? A small quantity of provisions grew, under his miraculous power, into profusion. The multitude was filled, their gratitude was unbounded; and they retired loudly proclaiming him to be the Messiah that was to come; more convinced perhaps of this truth, from the uncommon benignity of his character, than from the prodigy which they had wituessed. And look to the first ages of Christianity, and see the faithful make, on occasions like the present, what great and almost

incredible sacrifices. Yes, in defect of all other resources, we find them selling their very persons, surrendering their very liberty into the hands of barbarians; and leaving the price of this first of human blessings behind them, for the relief of their famishing brethren. What a prodigy of humanity? Great God! And shall we, whom he has fondly excepted from a too general visitation, deliberately refuse to vindicate his providence? Shall we turn aside from such depths and abundance of human misery, as perhaps never before occurred in the history of any people. O! it is not by a delegated voice that misery should implore; it should plead for itself; you should see it with your own eyes, hear it with your own ears; one beseeching glance from a famishing child, one sigh from the breaking heart of its parent, would go deeper into yours, would do more with you in a moment, than my words, were I speaking to you for ever! What power have I to affect you? None; comparatively at least, none. When my mind represents you shocked and abashed at scenes that would be new to you, comparing them with your own situation, dreading, at every instant, some more horrible discovery, the God of mercy, spurring you to minute investigation, your nature recoiling at every issue of it: in fine, putting this solemn question to your souls, is it possible that the deplorable beings we now see before us, separated from the living and the dead, holding to the world only by a sense of their sufferings, can be creatures of the same God with ourselves, members of the same society, our brethren in Christ Jesus? Oh then E.

it is that humanity would triumph, then would the gates of your institution fly open to remedy the unavoidable consequences to the living, and quiet the shades of the dead. Then would the mourning widow forget the bloody day that deprived her babes of a father and protector; since they had found fathers and protectors in you. I tell you that the utmost effort of the ministry can do comparatively nothing. To be roused to the height of mercy you should have personal experience of what passes around you; you will then carry the impression to your graves. Sermons and preachers are rapidly forgotten. One single morning devoted to explore the recesses of misery in this metropolis would preach to you through life; would stamp you merciful for ever. While I press you to an increase of your institution, full well do you know the necessity of it. But alas! I want the power of determining you, of melting you down to the extent of my wishes. God has not given it to me; if he had, be assured I would use it: I would encircle you with my little clients, hang them on your garments, teach their fatherless arms to entwine about your knees, their innocent eyes to fasten upon yours, their untainted lips to cry Mercy, for we perish! Do perish! Do you think you could resist? I would bid you observe the force of nature in the breast of a parent. Mothers crying to you with extended arms to save their children. No, think not of us, would they say, We are satisfied to suffer. Let us expire, if you will, we shall expire in peace, but save, O save our children! Many of you are parents yourselves. There would