2. Need I state to a christian assembly the necessity laid upon us all to cultivate the character I have thus attempted briefly to describe? To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit and comfort the sick and the afflicted, is incumbent upon every man endowed with moral perception, but the obligations of the christian to pursue this course of conduct, are most weighty and inalienable. He cannot shut out from his attention the sufferings and misfortunes of his brethren of the human family without renouncing his name, and without forfeiting his rights to the hopes and promises of the gospel. Our religion is emphatically the religion of love. Love is the end of the commandment, the perfection of the christian character, and the most acceptable offering we can present to Almighty God. Upon this principle the poor have a claim,--a claim stronger than human law could establish upon their fellow men. We are all the stewards and almoners of Providence, and a rigid account will be demanded of those means which were given to us in trust for the purposes of beneficence. Let the rich man ask himself by what means he has been prospered in life, and inhabits the splendid or the commodious habitation, while another has been condemned to eat the bitter bread of poverty. He may reply that he has been industrious and provident, that he has passed a life of anxious labor to amass the wealth or the competency he enjoys. But can he forget that all his success must at last be referred to the great disposer of events? Can he be ignorant that it is God who has filled his basket and his store, who has given the genial heat and refreshing showers to his harvest, and guarded them from blasting and mildew, who has commanded the favoring winds to blow upon his richly freighted vessels, and has saved them from rocks and tempests, who has bestowed upon him his powers of mind, and afforded him health and opportunity to employ them? Can he be unmindful of all this when he beholds the fluctuations of prosperity, and the sudden and unexpected manner in which it is both given and 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.