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SERMON IX.

FOR THE WIVELSCOMBE DISPENSARY.

2 KINGS, XX. 5.

I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee.

In the various addresses to the feelings of charitable Christians which it has fallen to my lot in the course of a long ministry to make, this subject is certainly not that which is the most easy of execution; its difficulties, however, do not proceed from the strength of any prejudice which such institutions have to encounter, from any surprise which their novelty excites, or any suspicion of danger which may be supposed to mingle with the good they do; but the difficulty proceeds from the degree to which the public mind is familiarised to such institutions; for compassion often requires novelty and effect in the misfortunes it relieves. A vast asylum for outcasts and wanderers, a place of penitence and retirement for the daughters of sin and affliction; all this captivates the fancy of compassion, and because it does so, produces powerful exertions in support of such charities. But who passes a day of his existence without witnessing more or less of the frailties of the body? pain and fever we gaze at near at hand-it seems to be the inevitable condition of man-and we are too apt to fall into careless indifference on such subjects. Yet, though we think not of him, the sick man languishes in his misery, and cries to that God, who, while the

universe is revolving round him, is not deaf to the feeblest cry of pain. If the very hairs of our head are numbered, is not our anguish and our pains noted down? Is every outward and visible change of the material world important enough for the notice of the Creator, and are the groans of sickness, and the depressions of sickness, and the despair of sickness, unnoticed by him? Does he care for a grain of matter, and is he heedless of the soul's agonies? Oh yes! God knows of all the secret wretchedness of man! not one languishes in dark obscurity, and is clean forgotten! God knows it allall suffering, all anguish, all tears come before him; and he is busied with the lamentations and deep sorrows of our hearts.

It is not pleasant nor expedient, as a general practice, to compare one charity with another, and yet I must be allowed to say, that there are some circumstances in an institution for the dispensation of medicines which gives it a superiority to other charities. In the first place, there is very little fraud or imposture to be suspected: we have the consolation of knowing that those who receive the relief in all probabilily want it. I do not say that imposture is impossible, but it is improbable, and of very rare occurrence. I add, also, that if a human being is ever to be excused for not guarding against all contingent evil, it is in the case of sickness that we are most inclined to treat his improvidence with some degree of indulgence. Take it at the worst; suppose that all the earnings of a poor man's labour have been exhausted on his family; that they have been a little better clad, and a little better fed, than inflexible economy and exact reasoning can justify, we may surely forgive that excess, which if it be not the mere alleviation of hunger and nakedness, is nothing very far removed from it. We will admit to the callous and unerring reasoner, that the poor labourer has done wrong; that if his wisdom had been perfect, and his

economy perfect, he should have reflected upon the extreme probability of occasional sickness, and should have been prepared to meet it from his previous savings. Alas, my dear brethren, this is reasoning; but your heart tells you better than all this; and I don't believe there is a man in this church who could see a poor labourer bowed down with disease, or his children dying beside him, who could say to him, "Why did not you save money to meet this calamity? Why ask of me that relief which you might, if more careful, have procured for yourself?" In your closet you might intend to say this, but when you saw the misery of the poor man you could not say it-your heart would not let you say it; you would be his steward, and his minister, and the angel of peace and health to his afflicted house. You would be the first to exclaim with the text, "I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will relieve thee!" And suppose, my dear brethren, that any one could put this question to a sick labourerwhat an answer! - think of the answer!" I have laboured from my youth till now, before the sun rose, and after the sun had set; I have lived on the coarsest food, I have worn the meanest garments, we have all lived on the scantiest means: joy, nor luxury, nor riot, were ever known in my mean dwelling; to live was our only object; we sought for no more, and we hoped for no more; how was it possible from the morsel which Providence has assigned to me, that I could be expected to save any thing. Look at my worn-out frame, at the miserable dwelling in which I live, at my children half clad, at the partner of my life, as careworn and as laborious as I am, and tell me if you can. in reason or in justice expect that I should have saved any thing for disease. Is it my fault that my limb has been crushed by some accident; that the deadly fever has crept into my blood, and wasted me to this shadow? Did I bring this contagious disorder, which has robbed

me of some of my children, and seems to be hastening the others to their grave? Pity the sorrows of a poor labouring man-have mercy on the cottage-turn not thy face from the poor." There lives not a man who would not at such an appeal exclaim, with the text, "I have heard thy prayers, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will relieve thee!"

But what if a poor man did save up something against sickness? suppose in him such an extraordinary foresight, such rare and commendable virtue; would it be no pain to you to see the fruits of that providence exhausted upon sickness-the difficult and gradual savings of years dissipated in the cure of that evil, against which no human care could possibly have guarded? No one who has not lived long among them can tell how respectable, how venerable, how affecting is the economy of the poor. "There is the little I have saved, gathered together by the sufferings of the body; it is all that is to support me in my old age; it is my only chance, under God, of bettering my condition in this life: if you take that you take my all, and leave me utterly destitute." It is to save these sacred treasures of the poor, that we first thought of ministering to their sickness. Such a feeling appeared to us to be of inestimable value; to be the nurse of industry and the pledge of virtue: we have given them medicines, we have sought them out in their obscurity, we have saved their earnings and their little property, to nourish them when the strength of manhood is worn away, and they are vanquished by time.

I have alluded to one part of our plan, which is productive of the happiest effects the attendance on the poor at their own houses in dangerous and distressing cases, where the patient is unable to attend at the dispensary. Ask those who practise in this institution whether such attendance is or is not an important feature of the plan? Ask them what is the nature of the

distress they daily witness?—whether a dispensary for the poor is a mistaken scheme of visionary benevolence? whether all the misery of the lower orders, of which you hear so much, does really appear to him who views them intimately and often, and near? I am sure no doubts will originate with them. Many are the wretched abodes into which they have made their way: they have seen the widow and her children smitten by the same disease, and perishing on the same ground; they have often heard the labourer praying for his strength, that he might feed his children as they were wont to be fed. They have not only witnessed the melancholy ravages of disease in every period of age, but their knowledge of the human frame has taught them too well, that the disease itself has sprung from that very poverty which it so miserably aggravates.

In addition to this, we are promoting and extending to the utmost of our power the effects of that great discovery of vaccination, which bids fair to annihilate one of the greatest scourges of the human race: amid the ghastly forms of death which surround us, the spectacles of pain and anguish which flock to us for relief, it is a solid source of happiness to witness this victory gained over destruction; to reflect that, amid all the famines, the wars, and the tumults of the world, God has given us this great amelioration of our lot; and when all we have suffered is past over and forgotten, the blessing of this great discovery will still remain, and be felt and remembered by the humblest of mankind. There is something in some public charities which attracts the eye; and it is right there should be this where it is possible, because the first object is to procure attention for the misfortune which you wish to relieve there is something, for instance, beautiful and affecting in the neat and healthy appearance of children in charity schools appropriated to their support; the very sight of them is much more impressive than any