scribe to the truth of these?)- there is all the difference that can be imagined, in point, both of principle and effect, between an institution for the relief of want, and an institution for the relief of disease. The one multiplies its objects; not so the other. The one enlists the human will on its side, the other will ever remain the object of painful reluctance and revolt to all the feelings of our sentient nature. Open a door for the admission of the indigent, and we shall behold a crowd of applicants increasing every year, because lured hitherward by the inviting path of indolence or dissipation. Open a door for the diseased, and we shall only have a definite number of applicants. Men may become voluntarily poor, but they will not become voluntarily blind, or deaf, or maimed, or lunatic. It is thus that while an asylum for want creates more objects than it can satisfy; an asylum for disease, creates none but what may meet all and satisfy all 1

Upon such grounds, then, do I think it our privilege, as well as our duty, to strengthen the hands of those who, in this first city of the earth, are employed in giving efficacy to institutions of such a

made yet broader still; that the points of common interest and sympathy between them, which even now are too few and feeble, will soon vanish, and the difficulties, against which many a poor being now struggles with some hope of relief, will become greater than he can bear.

1 Chalmers's Political Economy, p. 419.

nature. How faithfully this labour of theirs has been discharged in the cases to which our attention is now about to be directed, I need not point out; for you, who dwell here, are witnesses of the fact. I will pause, therefore, that you may hear from the authorized report, the particulars of their proceedings for the last year.

[Here the report was read.]

We have been speaking, my brethren, of the duty of bearing one another's burdens, and of the law of Christ, which is fulfilled thereby. See, now, what some of those burdens are. See them in the statement which has just been submitted to your notice. They are the burdens of the friendless and orphan child,—of the maimed and palsied sufferer,

-of the profligate vagrant,― of the frenzied lunatic. And these, observe, reckoned up by hundreds, and by thousands. What a fearful aggregate of misery! What an emphatic commentary upon that Scripture, which speaks of the whole creation groaning, and travailing together in pain until now 1. What a testimony is it to the curse which came by sin! the curse, which makes us feel the bitterness of death, and which only can be removed by Him who bore its penalty, to the very uttermost, upon the cross. Is there any one who can gaze upon such a spectacle unmoved? or think

1 Rom. viii. 22.

that he is not personally and responsibly pledged to lighten, as far as in him lies, the weight of these heavy burdens? The wise man may glory in his wisdom, the rich man in his riches, and the mighty man his might; yet what are wisdom, or riches, or might, but instruments, placed in the hands of their possessors, to glorify the God who gave them, by helping God's creatures. This land may be the glory of the world; and this city may stand foremost in deeds of noble enterprise; and her merchants, like those of Tyre, may be princes, and her traffickers, the honourable of the earth; but what profiteth your success, my brethren, unless it be sanctified by the faith of Christ; unless it give you new life and energy to do His will, and "yield yourselves, your souls and bodies, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable, unto the Lord, which is your reasonable service 1." A reasonable service, indeed, I trust that you will account it, thus to be devoted unto God; and if so, then will you, yet further, account it a reasonable service to hear the cries, and relieve the wretchedness of those who call upon you for succour; to lift up from the dust their trembling and care-worn limbs; to wipe the tears of anguish from their eyes, to bind up their bruised spirits, and to invoke God's blessing upon the remedies of earthly skill, and the ministration of kind affection so freely bestowed upon them.

1 Rom. xii. 1.

And reasonable will you account it, again, to restrain the evil-doer from deeds of violence or fraud, and preserve thereby to the industrious the fruits of his industry; and whilst, in the course of your appointed duties, you punish the offender with righteous chastisement, you will strive to make that chastisement a means of lasting benefit to his soul, an instrument to repair the misery of those sinful habits which crime has gathered around him.

Nay, you will turn away from no scene, however painful, wherein the services of Christian philanthropy can be manifested. Every part of that

vast lazar-house, of which the vision was once so vividly presented to the poet's mind', and the reality of which passeth not away, must be explored with faith and stedfastness. It is not 'the sumptuousness of palaces, nor the stateliness of temples,' 'the remains of ancient grandeur,' nor the curiosities of modern art,' which you are called upon to survey; 'but to dive into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken 2.' Even to the cell of the poor lunatic will you re

1 See Paradise Lost, book xi. 465–495.

2 Burke's Works, vol. iii. p. 380. How refreshing is it to turn from the cold calculations of the mere theorist, to this glowing eulogy upon the immortal Howard!

pair, to the walls that echo to the cries of the raving maniac, and the idiot's melancholy moan; even there will you carry the patient, and gentle, and watchful spirit, and use those appliances and means' which the experience and skilfulness of science have vouchsafed to you. You will use them promptly and thankfully; and rejoice to behold them made, as they so frequently are made', the instruments of giving back strength to the helpless, repose to the frantic, and peace to the distressed. And as you see the whirlwind of tumultuous passions gradually subsiding beneath their influence,— the eyes beaming again with the light of reason,the heart opening once more to receive and give back the dearest sympathies of parent, or wife, or husband, or child, or brother, or sister, and the tongue ready to repeat the lessons of the Redeemer's love; surely you will bless God for his mercies, and say that have not lived in vain. You will recogyou

nise in that scene of mercy, an emblem, though faint it may be, of the compassion and might which, in the cities and plains of Palestine, baffled him whose name was Legion, restrained the fury of devils, and drove them out from their strongholds. And

1 It is worthy of remark that, of the 341 curable patients reported to have been in Bethlem Hospital, during the last year, 48 men and 64 women (making in all 112,) were discharged as cured. Of the remainder, some had died, and others been discharged by request of friends, but 121 were still remaining on the last day of the year as curable.