SERMON XVIII.* "Take the child and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages." Exodus, ii., 8. The task assigned me to-day, my hearers, is one, I confess to you, which I would willingly have been spared. After witnessing the recent evidence of your generosity-after seeing you only two Sabbaths ago, crowding around the altar of humanity, to deposit your alms,-I acknowledge it is unpleasant so soon to repeat the work of solicitation. Had you given nothing then, I might plead with you now. Had I discovered, when the call of distress then reached your ears, that you turned hard-hearted away, I might now speak to you with redoubled warmth and energy. But con. trary to all this, you came forward with cheerfulness to the invitation. You cast your mites into the treasury at a period when the pressure of the times might almost have jus. tified your refusal to do so; and I will not conceal that such conduct, although the surest pledge of success in asking your charity again, has thrown over me a feeling of sensible reluctance in being called to make the application. In another view of the subject, however, I find much to inspire confidence. The institution on whose behalf I address you has already that sort of standing which saves me the trouble of pushing its claims. You have seen it from its origin to the present hour, passing, unhurt, the different stages of its progress, till now, if I may say so, its character is formed. None of us at this late day need be told, that, in bestowing our bounty here, we do an act which is not merely dictated by benevolence, but approved by the soundest maxims of political economy. I say political economy, and yet a spirit of discouragement has arisen, I admit, both in Eng. land and America, towards the general principle of public charities. For why? Because, by holding out the offer of gratuitous support, they go to perpetuate idleness and dissuade it from every effort to take care of itself. Why is it that the poor rates for the last ten years have increased, on both sides the Atlantic, more than thirty per cent. be. yond the proportionate increase of population? There is no cause for it which we can see, unless it be that charitable institutions, in the same time, have been multiplied in very nearly the same ratio. All this, however, has nothing to do with the political economy of maintaining indigent female orphans. They constitute a splendid and honorable exception to the rule; and in every document on the subject of pauperism, foreign or domestic, the provision made for their support is invariably shielded from the censure to which ordinary forms of systematical charity are exposed. The reason of it is obvious. None of the objections which lie so formidably in the one case can be detected for a moment in the other. For example: there is no facility for idleness; on the contrary, the inmates of the asylum are trained to every species of occupation which their probable allotment in life may require. Again: there are no encouragements to poverty. So far from it, when the individuals become of an age to gain their own subsistence, they are expected, in the pursuit of a virtuous and honorable employment, to provide for themselves. What less, I would ask, can be done for them, if any thing be done, than this? What less than to rescue them from the world till they are prepared with safety to enter it; to shelter the tender plants from exposure till they may be exposed without the certainty of ruin? No, my hearers, never will an institution like this withdraw its claims to public patronage till helplessness ceases to deserve relief and innocence to require protection. If it were supposable that a female child, thrown parentless on the world, and especially in a slave country, where the chance of labor is often the necessity of degradation-that such an one, with no instructions to follow and no example to imitate, should travel along to womanhood without a lost character and extinguished virtues, and blasted hopes, if she ever had any could we conceive of such an event in the common course of things, then, but not till then, might we rally philosophy enough to lower the Female Orphan Asylum a single inch from its present dignified and lofty elevation. * Preached in behalf of a Female Orphan Asylum. But it is time that I return to the passage which I have read to you from the sacred Scriptures. During the reign of one of the most celebrated of the Egyptian monarchs, an order was issued to check the increase of the Hebrews who resided in the country, by destroying all their male children. At that period, Moses, the subsequent author of the Pentateuch, was in the cradle. His mother, hunted and terrified by the public officers, concealed her child in a basket under the banks of the Nile, while his little sister, as being less liable to suspicion, stood at a distance to await the almost hopeless event. In this situation a daughter of the king, whom Josephus calls Thermutes, while walking near the river, discovered the basket and sent one of her attendants to bring it. It was accordingly brought to her, and, when opened, she saw the infant, who, from being so long deserted, was weeping. As might have been presumed, she was extremely affected herself; but, aware of the royal edict, instead of taking the babe home, she instructed his little sister, who was standing by, to go for a Hebrew nurse. The messenger obeyed, and on her return brought with her a female whom the princess addressed in the words of the text-" Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages." We need not wonder that the woman readily undertook the office, for she proved to be none else than the child's own mother. Such is the story as it is told in the simple and touching language of Inspiration, and such is the intrepid heroism of philanthropy, and such is the mysterious way in which God becomes a father to the fatherless, by making use of the feeble instrumentalities entrusted to mankind. Alas, my hearers, how affecting a representation does this narrative convey of these helpless orphans before us! True, they are not abandoned to the waters of the Nile; they are not condemned by the cruelty of despotism to the horrible process of premature strangulation. But what then? They are orphans: and where, in the whole variety of human epithets, is a name which carries along with it so many images of sorrow and woe? They are orphans: and if you have had a father to fold you in his arms and bless you, and a mother to press you to her heart and call you her child, if you have felt the kiss of parental tenderness imprinted on your lips, or the tear of parental solicitude dropping on your cheeks, you can imagine their condition. They are orphans: and through all the vast profusion of this world's magnificence and wealth, not a dwelling opens where they can go, and say, "We are at home!" Human life is sweetened by the serenity of domestic peace, but it is not for them. The fireside collects the happy family, and gladdens the brow of affection, but they have no part there. Silent, solitary, and forlorn, they look to the sky for their shelter, and to mankind for their friends. One thing, however, blessed be God, they do possess; and that is, an asylum, which has taken them, and nursed them on the bosom of its charity. From the wreck of all their earliest and warmest expectations, it has devised a plan for their rescue; it has supplied their wants, and cheered their despondency; it has fed their hunger, and clothed their nakedness, and visited their affliction, and housed them at last beneath the roof of a protecting beneficence. Tell me, ye patrons of deserted misfortune, whence came your project of mercy? Was it not from mothers? from those who had looked forward to the possibility of lying themselves upon the bed of death, with their children clustering around them in the interesting attitude of predestined and unprovided orphanage? If so, the event is explained. If so, it is easy to account for all you have yet done, for all you may do hereafter; and let me only say, that if there be on earth a spectacle of unrivalled sublimity and glory, it is when the loveliness of woman embarks in the sacred enterprise of collecting the wandering little outcasts of her sex, and leading them along, with a mother's care, in the paths of innocence and virtue. Do not think, however, you who have achieved all this, that you will go unpaid. No: in the language of our text, you will have your wages, and "the bread which you have cast upon the waters will return to you after many. days." Methinks you would be rewarded enough, could these children find words to testify their gratitude. In listening to them, they would say, You ransomed us from the con. tagion of the world. When our dear parents were sleeping in the dust, you came forward and offered us a home. You shed over us the tears of pity, and we saw your eyes fill, and your bosoms throb, while you heard the tale of our wretchedness. You have been our mothers, our more than mothers. You have fed us, when we were "poor and fatherless, and had none to help us." |