A Sermon Preached on the Anniversary of the Boston Female Asylum for Destitute Orphans, September 25, 1835

nd again taken away? Surely then the thoughtful and conscientious man will esteem his possessions, not so much a right which he has obtained as a trust committed to him, and he will acknowledge that the strictest justice approves what religion emphatically demands, that with a bountiful eye we should look upon the poor and destitute.

Such is our solemn duty; and it is important that it should be regarded in this light. Beneficence should not be merely the overflowing of a generous heart. This would be an unsafe and uncertain ground on which to place the principle of charitable distribution. Interesting objects indeed might not suffer from it, the orphan, the afflicted widow, decayed and broken age. Cold and insensible must be the heart that could shut up its sympathies from such petitioners. True beneficence however, cannot always be a delight. "It is not," says a powerful writer,[8] "an indulgence to the finer sensibilities of the mind, but according to the sober declarations of scripture, a