back into the very faults which had made them prisoners before, and which send them again to the cells with drunkards and vagrants, who harden them into shamelessness. But are we to forbear to seek to reform because they have failed to keep their promise? Are we to cease to advise kindly, and warn earnestly because they have again yielded to their degraded and vitiated taste? Shall we say that this man or that woman has shown himself or herself irreclaimable, and therefore we will spend no more time, no more kindness, on such an one? Who shall say that all is lost while life remains? Who shall say that the seeds of moral truth are dead in his heart because they have not yet germinated? How long vitality remains in vegetable seeds we all know. Shall there be less vitality in the seeds of moral truth? The wild grass grows, the useless weed, or the poisonous plant springs up into life, and seems to invoke and warrant entire condemnation of the soil; but let these be cut down, and how often come forth the sweet herb and the profitable grass, whose seeds have lain dormant while those profitless or poisonous productions were covering the surface. At some later day, in some season of great emergency, some hour of bitter trial, truths that seemed to have fallen profitless on the heart of the miserable prisoner, may come forth and bless with usefulness and peace the few closing days of a life that has been heretofore dedicated to folly and vice. Let us, then, sow the seeds by all waters; let us not withhold, morning or evening, our hands; and, when we have reason to believe that these seeds have found a place in the consenting mind of the listener, let us water them with the refreshing influences of our experience, and warm them into growth by that affection which is the basis of true philanthropy. It is thus we may alleviate the miseries of prisons, and make the criminal’s cell the vestibule to the temple of virtue and piety. In conclusion, let it be repeated with emphasis, that we are not to be driven from our efforts at personal reformation, by any failure of the prisoner to justify, in liberty, the hopes which he had warranted while in confinement. As often as he returns to his cell, he should return to our care,—our instruction. The last resolve may be permanent. The last “repentance may be unto life, never to be repented of.” And we shall have occasion, perhaps, in our observations upon life, to conclude that the best of mankind will find the fruition of their highest hopes less in the amount of their innocency than in the frequency of their repentance. JAMES J. BARCLAY, _President_. JOHN J. LYTLE, _Secretary_. PHILADELPHIA, JANUARY 1864. ------------------ LIFE MEMBERS. ON PAYMENT OF TWENTY DOLLARS AND UPWARDS. Ashmead, H. B.