Let us make misery and Aye, let us us then put forth his hand to the work. one decided, universal effort, to banish vice from this highly favored metropolis. ennoble it by our labors of philanthropy. not cease, until it shall be distinction proud enough for any common man, that he drew his first breath in the city of the pilgrims. But it is time that I adverted to the more immediate purpose for which we have this evening assembled. The Howard Benevolent Society requests your aid, and they have made it my duty to spread their case before you. I will solicit your attention only while I do so with all possible brevity. Allow me to mention at the beginning, that I speak on this subject from my own personal knowledge. When I undertook this service, I well knew that you would expect from me something more than vague, every day report. I therefore determined to examine for myself, for I dared to tell you only what I knew to be indubitable fact. I therefore requested one of their most benevolent associates to show me in what labors the society was engaged. He cheerfully complied, and a part of several days was devoted to this work of investigation. Its results I am happy to lay before you. We went to a garret, where a family of friendless foreigners, who had been driven by misfortune from the land of their nativity, were huddled around their remaining embers. There I heard that this society. had saved these parents from sinking into despair, and had rescued their children from ignorance and vice. We groped our way through dark and lonely passages, where nothing but poverty or mercy would venture, and I saw how childless, decrepit age, was looking to him for defence against hunger, and cold, and nakedness. He led me to a crowded and smoky chamber, where, stretched on a bed of sickness, lay a husband and a father, whose honest and manly face was worthy of the age, as he was of the country, of William Wallace. His children, excepting those now in helpless infancy, had been swept away by death. His vessels had been stranded on our coast, and one of them was wrecked in our own bay. Of all his property, the only thing left him, as he himself informed us, was his family Bible; and excepting that bold forehead, that commanding eye, and the well bred tones of that faltering voice, it was the only thing in the apartment which reminded us of better days. I there learned how this Society had stepped in, between this family and absolute starvation, and how it was, at this moment, holding them up from sinking into the grave. We went to the chamber of many a widow, and every where did I find that the manager of this Society was received as the harbinger of joy. We visited one, whose prospects had been fair, and whose eye beamed with as much intelligence as that of any one of you who now hears me; yes, and it beamed with piety too. The husband of her youth had been prematurely snatched away. For a while she cheerfully and happily supported, by her own labor, her little fatherless children. At length, consumption marked her for his victim. Still she yielded not. For the sake of her two little ones, she long maintained the unequal conflict with both poverty and disease. At last, nature sunk beneath the struggle. It was then that this sociBut for their aid, she and ety came to her rescue. her children must have died. I marked how her countenance brightened, as the friend who accompanied me entered. I was touched by the sympathy with which he inquired concerning her wants, and no less so with the trembling confidence with which she looked up to this society for the protection of these children, who, as she was too well aware, were soon to become orphans. He would have taken me further, but I felt it to be needless. I knew that I had only to state what I had already seen, of the deeds of these benevolent men, to render it certain that you would not allow their plea to pass by you unregarded. It is to carry forward such works of mercy, that they ask your assistance. They need, in the first place, your personal services. The duties of this charity occupy time; for this society mean to act with discrimination. They relieve no applicant, except after personal examination of the nature of the case. The labor falls heavily upon them, and though they do not repine, they ask for more coadjutors, that thus their charity may be more widely extended. They ask for your pecuniary aid. Their treasury is exhausted. They already give their time. They give liberally of their money. But they cannot meet the demands upon their benevolence, for their means are limited. As a last resource, they appeal to your liberality; I know that you will not suffer such an appeal to be made to you in vain. And now, I entreat each one of you, in the solitude of his own bosom, to decide now how much he will cast into the sacred treasury. We ask you, ye men of wealth, who, a few days since, when consternation sat on every countenance, trembled lest the earnings of a whole life time should be lost in the crash of universal bankruptcy, how large a tribute of gratitude do ye owe to that God, who has saved you from ruin? We ask you, ye men of letters, counsellors, physicians, ministers of the altar, how large a portion of your income is due to the sacred purpose of rescuing parents from absolute starvation, and their children from ignorance and vice? We ask you, men of labor, who, rich in health, are able yet to bid defiance to poverty, what will ye give to your brethren, whom sickness has deprived of their only means of support? We ask you, mothers and daughters, what token of sympathy will ye this evening extend to the lone, sinking, despairing widow, and to her helpless little ones? O let each of us prove himself worthy of the brotherhood of man. But I know that you will act worthily. deeds of mercy are already recorded. show that ye have improved in charity the moral cultivation of another year. Your former May the event and piety, by May ye so use the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, ye may be received into everlasting habitations. May God grant it for Christ's sake. Amen. OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST CRUCIFIED CONSIDERED. 1 CORINTHIANS, I. 22-24. FOR THE JEWS REQUIRE A SIGN, AND THE GREEKS SEEK AFTER WISDOM; BUT WE PREACH CHRIST CRUCIFIED, UNTO THE JEWS A STUMBLING BLOCK, AND TO THE GREEKS FOOLISHNESS; BUT UNTO THEM THAT ARE CALLED, BOTH JEWS AND GREEKS, CHRIST THE POWER OF GOD, AND THE WISDOM OF GOD. THE word Christ signifies the anointed one. It is precisely equivalent to the word Messiah, one of the most august forms of designation which the Hebrew language contains. Crucifixion was a mode of capital punishment, inflicted only upon criminals of the lowest rank and the most aggravated turpitude. Hence the words, Christ crucified, signify the Messiah, or the anointed one, suffering a most painful and ignominious death. We are informed by the Apostle in the text, that the doctrine expressed by these words met with universal opposition. The Jews, as a nation, rejected |