Divisioa ^^^CL Section ^0 ' | :*^,,^^ ;^ ff^' :m^ THE ClTYi ITS SINS AND SORROWS THE CITY: ITS SINS AND SORROWS. Bbino a Skbies of Sermons from Lukb ziz. 41. RAGGED SCHOOLS THOMAS GUTHRIE, D. D. NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 530 BROAT^WAY. THE CITYi ITS SINS AND SORROWS. SERMON I. *' He beheld the city, and wept over it." — Luke xix. 41. ONE evening as Saul returned to Gibeali with Lis cattle from their distant pastures, the lowing of his herd was lost in a wail that grew loud and louder as he drew near the city. Some mischief has happened. Amazed and alarmed, he hurries forward to find the people all dissolved in tears — distracted by some public grief. What can have happened? Bathed in golden sunset, Gibeah from her mountain seat looked quietly down on the green vale of Jordan, away to the shores of the Dead Sea. He saw no occasion whatever tor this terrible turmoil. He saw noi dead 1* 6 THE city: nor dying. Why, then, do the men plucl their beards, the women with dishevelled haii and long loud wail beat their naked breasts, and the very children, moved by sympathy and infected with the general grief, mingle tlieir own with their parents' tears? Since morning, when he left the city, a m.essenger, who sped on flying feet, had arrived, breath- less, from Jabesh-Gilead. He brought alarm- ing tidings. He tells Saul's townsmen that unless they and the country will rise to the rescue, the city must open her gates to the Ammonites, and submit to the most barbarous cruelties. Ignorant of this, nor seeing occa- sion for their sorrow, Saul, on whom the Spiril of the Lord w\as about to descend, that he might rise an avenger and deliverer of the op- pressed, demanded to know the cause of this frantic grief. He said : — "What aileth the people that they weep?" The same question may be asked regarding the Saviour's tears on the occasion to which my text refers. A mighty crowd was rolling down upon Jerusalem from the sides of Olivet. ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 7 On they came, rending the air with acclama- tions. With prophetic ear, and five centuries before, Zecbariah had heard these shouts, and catching them, where he, stood upon the heights of prophecy, he shouted back again to the jubilant multitude : — " Kejoice greatly, 0 daughter of Zion, shout, O daughter of Jeru- salem, behold thy King cometh unto thee. He is just, and having salvation, lowly and riding upon an ass." Now I can fancy one of that crowd — who was near enough our Lcyd to see the tears upon his cheek — with greater surprise than Saul, asking John or Peter, or some other one of the twelve, who formed all the body-guard of this King, What aileth Jesus that he weeps? In such an hour, wnat makes him sad? Did ever king thus enter his capital — on the eve of his coro- nation thus present himself to a joyous peo- ple ? What ails him ? What would he have? The nation renders him every honor. His enemies being witnesses, the whole world is gone after him. The palm trees yield their branches, the men their robes, the women 8 THE city: their admiration, the whole multitude their voices, as they pour their hearts into the joyous cry : — " Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed be he that oometh in the name of the Lord." Why, then, that shadow on his thoughtful brow, that deep expression of sorrow on hia face — in his eyes these starting tears ? Every- thing smiles on Jesus. The day is auspicious. Jerusalem has come out to welcome her long expected King. The whole scene is bathed in sunshine, nor is there a cloud in all the sky of his smiling fortunes to account for tlys shower of tears. What aileth Jesus that he weeps? There must be some secret grief, til at, overflowing the deep fountains of his heart, runs out at his eyes in these streaming tears. There was. Often coveted yet fatal power 1 he foresaw the future. But however eventful to this world were the next three days, it was not on their sad scenes and circumstances that his weeping eye was fixed. Down in that garden, by the glare of midnight torches, thaj; flashed and flickered amid its hoary olives, he saw a ITS SINa AJ^D SORKOWS, 9 prisoner bound fast with cords; in yonder judgment hall, that towered conspicuous above the other buildings, he saw a captive, arrayed in the mockery of purple, and bearing on his brow a thorny crown ; in that long street which wound through the city, he saw one exhausted by brutal usage, and pale with loss of blood, fainting, falling beneath a cross ; and on a distant mount, which rose beyond Jerusalem, by the light of what seemed a dying sun, he dimly saw a mangled form hanging on the fatal tree. In these figures, which presented themselves in affecting and terrible succession, the " seer" saw himself — none around to weep for him but some kind women, nor any to confess him but a dying thief. Is it for this he weeps? No. He looked over the intermediate events, onward to the future of forty years. The curtain rose. Jerusalem was before him. " He beheld the city ;" not as now with the tide of business, but the roar of bat- tle in its streets — torn by contending factions, and Caesar thundering at the gates — ^brother, 10 THE city: staggering from tlie famine-struck house, to strike his sword into a brother's bowels — the holiest laws of nature horribly reversed : not infants living on the fountain of a mother's breast, but mothers — famished, miserable, mad- dened mothers, feeding upon their own off- spring; the breached and battered walls manned by living skeletons; the streets re- sounding with the groans of the dying, and choked with the festering bodies of the dead. How miserable the aspect of Jerusalem I He beholds scenes of sufferings, which, as de- scribed by an eye witness, are without a parallel even in the annals of the most savage wars. Nor does the curtain fall on the stag(- of this tragedy of many terrible acts, until th(; Roman torch has wrapped the city — ^body and limbs, the house of David, and the house of God — in one red winding sheet of flame, and the Roman plough has buried her guilty ashes in the silent earth. It was these, the guilt of Jerusalem and the sufferings of his countrymen, that were in Jesus' eye. Hence this sorrow and thesa ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 11 tears. Hence, on another occasion, that most touching burst of pitj, patriotism, and piety : " 0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." And at a time, when we should have expected, that through the self- ishness inherent to suffering, his own sorrows would have absorbed all his feeling, hence also that tender but ominous advice to. the women who bewailed and lamented him: — - " Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but for yourselves and children." Kestrain your grief, keep your tears for a future occa- sion, reserve them for yourselves, for the babe unborn, the child that hangs upon j^our breast. When Pontius Pilate — that unhappy time- server — brought out our Lord before the infu- riate multitude, perhaps he cherished the hope, that the pitiftd sight would calm their passions, as Jesus' voice did the blustering winds and rude waves of Galilee. And we are told, that aa Jesus appeared, "wearing the crown of 12 THE CITY. thorns and the purple robe," Pilate appealed to them, saying :— " Behold the man." These words of a scene, which even in its rudest painting, we cannot study without emotion — although like oil poured, not on the stormy waters, but the roaring fii-e, they only increas- ed and intensified the cry of " crucify him, crucify him," — may be applied with propriety to the scene before us. " He wept." This was not a God weeping — God cannot weep. These were not angels' tears — for angels never weep. In them, in the sad expression on his blessed face, I say with Pilate: — "Behold the man I " the veritable man, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, soul of our soul, heart of our heart, strung by the same hand and tuned to the same harmony as our own. How precious are tliese sorrows I They attest his perfect man- hood. They assure us of his sympathy, when we attempt to lay bare before you the evils of our city, and rouse you to arrest and amend them. They warrant us to expect a blessing from him who loved his kindred as a man, and his country as a patriot From heaven he ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 13 watches our fight with the powers of darkness, and regards with applauding eje all — the humblest as well as highest labored — who, sighing and crying "for the abominations that are done in the land," labor to leave the world, their native country, or the city of their habi- tation, somewhat better than they found them. Before we unveil the evils that call for tears, and, as we shall by and by show, call for some thing else than tears, let us — 1st. Look at the city in some of its favorabli aspects. This earth's earliest city was built by a mur- derer. Its foundations, I may say, were laid in blood. Enoch was its name, Cain was its founder. Those who, living far from the din and bustle of cities, read with a wonder that grows into horror, the dark record of their courts and crimes; those, who see in the blast- ing effect of their murky air on flower, and shrub, and tree, only an emblem of their with- ering influence on the fairest human virtues; those simple cottagers, who, tremblingly alive 2 14 THE omr: to their danger, saw a son or a daughter leave home for the distant city, and have received her back from a Magdalene, or him from a prison, to expire in the arms of forgiving, but broken-hearted affection, they may fancy that the curse of the first murderer and their first founder hangs over earth's cities — dark, heavy, as their cloud of smoke. We can excuse them for thinking so. Great cities some have found to be great curses. It had been well for many an honest country- lad, and many an unsuspecting young woman, that hopes of higher wages and opportunities of fortune, that the gay attire, and polished tongue, and gilded story of some old acquaint ance, had never turned their steps cityward, nor lured them away from the rude simplicity but safety of their rustic home. Many a foot that once lightly pressed the heather or brush- ed the dewy grass, has wearily trodden in darkness and guilt and sin these city pave- ments. Happy had it been for many that they bad never exchanged the starry skies for the lamps of the town, nor had ever left their ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 15 louely glens, or quiet hamlets, or solitary shores, for the throng and roar of our streets — well for them, that they had heard no roar but the river's, whose winter flood it had been safer to breast; no roar but ocean's, whose stormiest waves it had been safer to ride than encounter the flood of city temptation, which has wrecked their virtue and swept them into ruin. Yet I bless God for cities. I recognise a wise and gracious providence in their exist- ence. The world had not been what it is with- out them. The disciples were commanded to "begin at Jerusalem," and Paul threw himself into the cities of the ancient world, as offering the most commanding positions of influence. Cities have been as lamps of light, along the pathway of humanity and religion. Within them science has given birth to her noblest discoveries. Behind their walls freedom has fought her noblest battles. They have stood on the surface of the earth like great break- waters, rolling back or turning aside the swell- ing tide of oppression. Cities indeed have 16 THE city: been the cradles of human liberty. They have been the radiating, active centres of al- most all church and state reformation. Hav- ing therefore no sympathy with those who, regarding them as the excrescences of a tree or the tumors of disease, would raze our cities to the ground, I bless God for cities. And before addressing you on their evils, will ad- vert to some of their advantages. First, The highest humanity is developed in cities. Somehow or other, amid their crowding and confir.emont, the human mind finds its fullest, freest expansion. Unlike the dwarfed and du^ty plants which stand around our suburban villas, languishing, like exiles, for the purer air and freer sunshine that kiss their fellows far away in flowery field and green woodland, on sunny banks and breezy hills, man reaches his highest condition amid the social influ- ences of the crowded city. His intellect re- ceives its brightest polish where gold and silver lose theirs — tarnished by the searching smoke and foul vaporis of city air. The finest ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 17 flowers of genius have grown in an atmos- phere where those of nature are prone to droop, and difficult to bring to maturity. The mental powers acquire their full robustness where the cheek loses its ruddy hue, and the limbs their elastic step, and pale thought sits on manly brows, and the watchman, as he walks his rounds, sees the student's lamp burning far into the silent night. And as aerolites — those shooting stars which, like a good man on his path in life, leave a train of glory behind them on the dusky sky — are supposed to catch fire by the rapidity of their motion, as they rush through the higher re- gions of our atmosphere, so the mind of man fires, burns, shines, acquires its most dazzling brilliancy, by the very rapidity of action into which it is thrown amid the bustle and ex- citements of city life. Second, The highest piety is developed in cities. It is well known that the most active trades- men, the most vigorous laborers, the most intelligent artisans, the most enterprising mer- chants, arc to be found in cities. And if, just 2* 18 THE city: as in those countries where tropical suns and the same skies ripen the sweetest fruits and deadliest poisons, you find in the city the most daring and active wickedness, you 'find there also — ^boldly confronting it — the most active, diligent, zealous, warm-hearted, self-denying, and devoted Christians. No blame to the country for that. Christians are like soldiers — it is easier fighting in the regiment, where the men stand shoulder to shoulder, than standing alone to maintain some solitary out- post. Christians, to use a familiar figure, are like coals, or firebrands — they burn brightest when gathered into heaps. Christians are like trees — ^they grow the tallest where they stand together ; running no small chancC; like a solitary tree, of becoming dwarfed, stunted, gnarled, and bark -bound, if they grow alone. You never yet saw a tall and tapering mast which, catching the winds of heaven in its outspread wings, impelled the gallant ship on through the sea, and over the rolling billows, but its home had been the forest — there, with its foot planted upon the Norwegian rock, it ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 19 grew amid neiglibors that drew up each orher to the skies. So is it with piety. The Chris- tian power that has moved a sluggish world on, the Christian benevolence and energy that have changed the face of society, the Christian zeal that has gone forth, burning to win na- tions and kingdoms for Jesus, have, in most instances, been born and nursed in cities. To the active life and constant intercourse which belong to them, religion has owed her highest polish, and that freedom from peculiarities and corners, which the stones of the sea-beach acquire by being rolled against each other in the swell and surf of daily tides. In rural districts, with all their natural and ever-fresh charms, a good man often finds a weary loneliness; and where field?, and hills, and long miles separate him from church and Christian neighbors, it needs an extraordinary measure of the grace of God to make his life of comparative isolation " a solitude sweet- ened." Give me the city with Christian neigh- bors at my door, and daily intercourse with genial and congenial spirits. If I fall, I have 20 THE CITV* them there that will help me up ; if I flag, I have them there that will help me on ; if two are better than one, twenty are better than two ; and with such opportunities of Christian fellowship as the city only affords, my circum- stances there are much more allied to those of the saints in glory, than his whose lot is cast amid the distant and scattered homes of rural scenes. He often has to pursue his journey through the desert — so far as human intei course is concerned — all but alone, a solitary pilgrim to Canaan. Manifold as are their evils, their temptations, and their snares, it is only in cities that piety enjoys the full benefit of the truth, **as iron sharpeneth iron, so doth the face of a man his friend." Third, The highest happiness of saints is found in city life. Man is a social as well as domestic being. His arms may not, but his heart can embrace more than a family. His nature is social. His religion is social. And as the earth's lofti- est peaks rise not in their snows on some iso- lated hill that stands like a lonely pyramid ou ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 21 the level plain, but where the mountains, as in the Alps, or Andes, or Himalayan range, are grouped and massed together, so the saint's most heavenly happiness is not attained in solitude, not even within the domestic circle, but where religious life exists in its social character. It was for a wider than a family circle Jesus taught us the prayer, " Our Fa- ther which art in heaven." How sweetly these words sound, when they rise in morning or evening orisons from a loving family ! How impressive that prayer appears when, beneath the roof of some noble temple, a great congregation, embracing sovereign and sub- jects, titled peer and humble peasant, rich and poor, the lowly and the lofty, all on their knees, and with one voice uttering the words, acknowledge in men a common brotherhood, and in God a common Father I And yet that sublime invocation, " Our Father which art in heaven," will never be offered in its full sub- limity till the swarthy Negro, and the roving Indian, and the wandering Tartar, and the homeless Jew, and all the pale and dark-faced 22 THE city: tribes of men, send it up swelling to the ear of God, like tlie voice of many waters and the voice of mighty thunderings. Then shall a free and glad world know the tenderness, the breadth and the length of the expression, "Oar Father which art in heaven." In presenting heaven itself to us under the emblem of a city, the Bible bestows the palm, and pronounces the highest possible eulogium on city life. "There are many mansions," says our Lord, **in my Father's house." " And I," says John, " saw the holy city. New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying. Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and He their God." Again, he says ; " He carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jeru- salem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a ' ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 23 jasper stone, clear as crystal; and had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels." "And the twelve gates were twelve pearls ; every several gate was of one pearl : and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple therein : for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it : for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof." Again he says : " After these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Halleluiah, salvation and glory and honor and power unto the Lord our God. And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of many thun- derings, saying, Halleluiah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth ; let us be glad and re- joice, and give honor to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready." May we all get an invitation to that mar- 24 rHE cirr: riage I Crowned and robed in white, may we all be found in the train of that heavenly bride ! By virtue of the new birth may we all be free- men of a city never built with hands, nor hoary with the years of time — a city, whose inhabitants no census has numbered — a city, through whose streets rush no tides of busi- ness, nor nodding hearse creeps slowly with its burden to the tomb — a city, without griefs or graves, without sins or sorrows, without births or burials, without marriages or mourn- ings— a city, which glories in having Jesus for its King, angels for its guards, saints for itfi citizens; whose walls are Salvation, and whose gates are Praise. 2dly. Let us attend to the evils of the city which call f&r Christian tearsj and for something else than tears. It is said, " Jesus beheld the city," and now, turning our eyes from Jerusalem, let us be- hold this city. Ere the heat of day has cast a raisty veil upon the scene, or ten thousand household fires have polluted the transparent ITS SINS AND SORMOWS. 26 air, I take a Btranger, to whom our city pre- sents its beauties in all the charms of novelty, and COD ducting his steps to yonder rocky ram- part, or some neighboring summit, I bid him look. Our ancient capital sits proudly throned upon her romantic hills. Gothic towers and Grecian temples, palace, castle, spires, domes, monuments and verdant gar- dens, picturesquely mingled, are spread out beneath his eye ; and when rising from the waves of the neighboring ocean, that with am- orous arms embraces the land, the sun blazes up to bathe all in golden light, he bursts into admiration, and pronounces the scene, as well he may, *' the perfection of beauty." Wher- ever he sweeps his eye, he finds a point of view to claim his admiration. There seems nothing here to weep for. What rare variety of hill and hollow I What a happy combina- tion of ancient and modern architecture ! Here, two distant ages gaze at each other across the intervening valley, while there, fit ornament of a lone Highland glen, in the very heart of the city crowned with cannon, and 2 26 THE city: reverberating the roar of business, stands a craggy rock, proud emblem of our country's strength and independence. What scene so worthy of the enthusiasm with which the Jew exclaimed, as he surveyed Jerusalem from the top of Olivet: — "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion." But let our stranger be a man of piety as well as a man of taste, and he will love the city for its Sabbaths, more than for its scenery. No loud street ciies, nor wheels of business or of pleasure, harshly grinding on holy ears, disturb the peace of the hallowed morning, oi scare thoughts of heaven from his pillow. If music awakes him, it is the song of birds that from neighboring gardens call the sleeping city to arise, and join with nature in the praises of her God. A serene silence fills the street, and leaves him to hear the footfall of a solitary passenger on the unfrequented pave- ment. The morning meal and worship over, the chime of Sabbath bells bursts upon his ear, accompanied with the tread of many feet outside. He leaves the house with us to seek ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 27 the house of God. An hour ago these streets were empty, but now such throngs are crowd- ing them as neither the six days' business nor pleasure calls forth. Decency sits upon all faces; devoutness upon many. Laughins childhood looks unusually grave, and cuibiiif^ in its playful spirit, walks with a thoughtfa! air. No rude manners, no laughter that be- speaks the vacant mind, no gay conversation disturbs the ear, or ill accords with the aspect of a people who look as if they were bent on some lofty purpose — to be engaged in some solemn yet not unhappy work. Their ftces give the lie to a common scandal. They look serious, but not sour— they wear an air of gravity, but not of gloom. Imagine that oui stranger has come from a land— from a city, such as Paris, for instance — where it may be said of the door of the church, as of the "strait gate," ^'few there be that find it;" where Sabbath bells are drowned in the roar of business, where labor only leaves the streets to give place to gaiety, and make room for the dance of pleasure ; where the workman lays* 28 THE CITY: down his tools, and the merchant locks his door to whirl away the evening in Sunday ball-rooms, or applaud in the crowded theatre. With what astonishment he gazes on the crowd. Onward it sweeps, by the closed doors and windows of every place of business, to discharge itself by different streams into more than a hundred churches, and leave the thoroughfares to resume the aspect of a ''deserted city," until the close of holy ser- vices again pours forth the living tide— all setting homewards, many, we trust, heaven- wards. Such is the scene our city presents on Sab- bath days. Long may it continue. Behold- ing the city thus, our stranger sees nothing to deplore. On the contrary, as David in his ex- ile envied the swallow which had her nest by the altar, and could fly on joyous wing at all times into the house of God, he envies us our Scottish Sa,bbaths, and land of precious priv- ileges. Of a city where God is so honored, his day is so hallowed, his temples are so thronged, he is ready to say, " The Lord hath ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 29 chosen Zion, he hath d3sired it for his habita- tion. This is my rest for ever ; here will I dwell." Such is the aspect in which the city may be presented. But, like the famed shield, which, because they saw it from opposite sides, one man asserted to be made of silver, and an- other of inferior metal, it presents two widely different aspects. Let us turn it round, and look on the other side. I know, and I bless God for it, that there is much good, that there is a more than ordinary proportion of godly people within our walls. No sojourner has to tremble here, as Abraham did in Gerar, saying, " Surely the fear of God is not in this place." I will venture to say that no city of its population and extent con- tains more, few, indeed, so many, of those who are the light of the world, and the salt of the earth. In no large city, perhaps, is the Sab- bath so well observed, and will there be found such a proportion of the peop' . in the regular habit of attending a house of God. If the number ot our churches may be taken as a 3* 30 THE CITY: test of piety, if the number of our hospitals and asylams may be taken as a guage of be- nevolence, if the number of our schools and colleges may be taken as a standard of intelli- gence, then, more than for its romantic beauty and picturesque position, it bears away the palm from all rival capitals, and sits en- throned and unchallenged as " Queen of Cities." Now I know all that. Yet, as there are scenes in nature where sylvan beauty is associated with features of a stern and savage character, as I have seen a lovely lake, with its gems of islands, lie sleeping under the shadow, while the woodbine, and holly, and evergreen ivy clothed the feet of a mountain which was rent into gloomy gorges, and reared its thunder-riven, naked peaks into the sky, there is much that is vicious amid all the grace, aod much that is impious amid all the piety of our city. If that is true of this city, let the public be assured that it is no less true of every large city in the kingdom. Which of them shall say to us, " Stand aside, I am liolier than thou?" ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 81 r once heard a venerable minister, when he Came in the course of his public prayers to ask the blessing of heaven upon our town, pray that God would have mercy upon this great and wicked city. Now I can fancy that the stranger whom we have conducted through its streets on the Sabbath, and who has only mingled in its serious and most select society, would listen with astonishment to such an ac- count of us, either from the pulpit or any- where else. It gave offence, deep offence, to some who were proud of their native place. Yet, whether the charge excite surprise or of- fence, this is a wicked as well as a great city. And he heals " the hurt of the daughter of God's people slightly," he is " a dumb dog that cannot bark," who conceals that fact from either himself or others. Under a fair and beautiful exterior, there is an extent of corruption, vile corruption, loath- some corruption, which has only to be laid bare to astonish all, and, I believe, to sicken many. Propriety forbids details. Ordinary modesty, not to say sensitive delicacy, would 32 THE CITT: sbrmk from them. Otherwise I could raise a curtain, I could reveal that which would make jour hair stand on end. Well may godly pa- rents tremble for the virtue of their children, and every holy mother, taking alarm, gather them beneath her wings, as the moor bird does her helpless brood when hawks are screaming in the sky. I tell you who are pa- rents, you who are the guardians of youth, that you have more need to keep an eye on the company and hours of your children, than look to the bolts and bars you trust to for pro- tection against housebreakers and midnight- robbers. We have heard much of these. Alive to what affects the security of their property, the public have been seized with alarm, and houses, if not streets, are barricad- ed. But there is more in peril than your gold and silver. There is something better worth guarding, and more needing to be guarded, than anything which iron-barred shutters can secure, or watchmen protect. There are more dangerous characters than robbers prowling about our town, and w^alking unchallenged ITS SINS AND SOREOWS. 83 on our streets — ^permitted by our laws to do what they dare not in Paris or Berlin, to pur- sue their infamous occupation with barefaced, and shameless, and bold effrontery. The sword, which should be a terror to evil-doers, rusts in its sheath. And when vice is allowed so to parade our streets as to interfere with the freedom of virtuous families, and so to establish herself among us, as, by creating the worst of all nuisances, to destroy the property of a neighborhood, surely the substance of liberty is sacrificed to its shadow, and the evil- doer protected at the expense of the good. Some of us are about to make a new effort for the reclamation of fallen woman, and the protection of such as are willing, Magdalene- like, to bathe Christ's feet with tears, and wash away their deep sins in his blood. As a preliminary step to this Christian enterprise, we have procured accurate statistics of the ex- tent of this great sin and sorrow of our large cities. Of them, I will say nothing more than this, that, while they were read, men held down their heads with shame, or held up their 84 THE CITY: hands in horror, or burst out into expressions of deep indignation. By that raveniog wolf that wastes our folds, I had seen one and another, and another, and another lamb plucked out of this very flock. I had seen the once fair and promising flowers that I had cultivated in this very garden cast forth, and, as vilest weeds, trodden in the mire of the public streets. I had seen the fall of a daughter — that bitterest of domestic mis- eries— blanch a mother's head, and, still more terrible to look on, turn a father's heart intc stone. I had known how a mother, when w( all were sleeping in peace, with weary foo^ and weeping eyes, had gone, Christ-like, U{ and down these streets — searching many » den of sin to seek and save her lost one. ] had seen enough to make a man exclaim, witl: Jeremiah, " 0 ! that mine eyes were tears, and mine head a fountain of waters, that I might weep day and night for the daughter of my people !" But never, never had we so much as fancied the extent and horrors of this evil, the number of short-lived victims it de- ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 36 vours, the bold cLiring with whicli the ac- cursed trade is |jursued, the invisible nets that are spread across the path of unsuspecting in- nocence, the fiendishly-ingenious methods which are plied to snare virtue, what masks of friendship are worn, what cunning arts of apparent kindness resorted to that vice may get the victims within her grasp, and drag them down to hell I I do believe that were the villainy and iniquity that are working and festering here and elsewhere — in every such, large city — ^laid bare before the eyes of public virtue, nothing would restrain its indignation. Men would take the law into their own hands. Men would be a law unto themselves ; and by what many might condemn as illegal, but oth- ers would applaud as a virtuous outbreak, they would sweep our cities clean of these panderers of vice, and dens of iniquity. It is not of property, but of virtue, that families are plundered. It is not life, but souls, that are murdered among us. Crimes are done that to my eye cast into the shade tlie guilt of him who, having through a trade 36 THE CITY; of murder supplied subjects for tlie dissecting- room, was received on the scaffold bj the roar of a maddened crowd, and launched into eter- nity amid shouts of public indignation. That old legend of a monster, to satisfy whose vora- cious appetite a city had year by year to sacrifice a number of its virgins, who, amid the lamentations of their mothers and the grief of their kindred, were led away trem- bling to his bloody den, is no fable here. That monster is amongst us. And if there is no other way of calling forth some champions to do him battle, of rousing the public from their supineness, of stirring up the minister in the pulpit to draw the sword of the Spirit, and the magistrate on the bench to draw the sword of the state, it may be necessary to throw this report out of its present secresy, and leave it to burst upon the city like a shell. I am guilty of no exaggeration. I.ask you, meanwhile, to believe that — and that, with all our apparent goodness, there lies beneath the surface much which no Christian man could behold, without-— like our pure and pitiful ITS SENS AND SORROWS. 37 Saviour — weeping over it. I know enough to call upon the young to shun the associate, who is infected with vice, more than the one infected with plague or deadly fever. Keep away from them that are going down to hell, more than from the grasp of a drowning man. '* My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother." " If sinners entice thee, consent thou not." " Keep thy heart with all diligence." "Ponder the path of thy feet," that they may never follow one of wliom it is written — " Her feet go down to death, her steps take liold on hell." I also know enough to implore parents, most prayerfully, to commit their children to the keeping of ^ all-present God. Guard them sedulously. Fold them early. Before the night brings out the ravenous wolf, and the wily fox, and the roaring lion, have all your lanjDs at home. Make it a bright, cheer- ful home. Mingle firmness with kindness. And from late hours, from dangerous com- panions, from nightly scenes of pleasure and amusement, more carefully keep your children 4 38 THE CITY: ITS SINS AND SORROWS. than you bolt door or window against those, who can but plunder your house of property, that is of infinitely less value than your domestic purity, of jewels, infinitely less pre- cious than your children's souls. SERMON II. ** He beheld the city, and wept over it" — Luke air. 4L WITHOUT driver, without hand to curb or guide him, a startled, maddened horse, with snowy foam speckling his mane, and the fire flashing from his heels, was once seen tearing along through a country village. He dragged a cart behind him. A little child was in it, who, every moment in danger of being dashed upon the road, clung to its sides in pale terror. A woman, as it passed, shot from her doorway, like an arrow from the bow-string. With outstretched arms, dishevel- led hair, and flying feet, she followed in full pursuit, filling the street with cries — that might have pierced a heart of stone — ^" Save that child ; save that child !" Whereupon a man, who had not humanity enough to join the chase and swell the cry, far less bravery 40 THE city: enougli, at his own peril, to throw himself across the path and seize the reins, coolly turned round on her to bid her cease her cries, saying, " Woman, it is not your child." The information was not new to her. She had left all her own safe in their nest at home. Nor did that heartless speech for a moment arrest her step, or still the cry of " Save that child ; save that child !" In that circumstance we have more than a touching example of the tenderness of a woman's heart. It illustrates the spirit of the gospel. A noble and generous woman 1 Sho was imbued with the large loving-heartednesii that is unhappy if others are miserable, that will not eat its own bread and drink its own cup alone, that is not content to be safe with- out also saving. There, in these outstretched arms, that anxious cry, those feet that hasten to save, you see, standing out in beautiful con- trast to selfishness, the broad, wide, warm benevolence of the gospel, the spirit of Cal- vary, the mind that was in Jesus Christ — and which, let me add, is in all that are Jesus ITS SINS AND SOEROWS. 41 Christ's. This furnishes a touchstone for test- ing a religious profession. A man, I pray you to observe, may be a true Christian, who falls even into grievous sin. Many a bark with sprung masts, and torn sails, and shattered bulwarks, gains the port. And many a man gets to heaven who has been all but wrecked. Indeed, "the righteous scarcely are saved," and the vessel which has her head laid heavenward, keeping careless watch, and thrown, so to speak, on her beam ends, by some sudden gust of temptation, may all but founder. In Bible story, as well as other records of Christian experience, how many sol- emn warnings have we to watch and pray ; how much that rolls out the loud alarum, " Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." We do not say that a Christian man cannot fall into sin. Yet it is one thmg to fall into sin, it is another to lie in it, to love it, to seek it, to court it, to pursue it, to enjoy it — as it is pursued and enjoyed by those who, in place of rejecting it, " like gravel in the mouth," '* roll it as a sweet morsel under theii 4* 42 THE city: tongue." It is one thing, being overcome of evil, to be the devil's captive — bewitched, be- guiled, caught in a snare and cast into dark- ness— and another to be a base deserter, a bold soldier, fighting in the ranks of Satan. Far be it from me to excuse or even palliate those sins in good men which crucify the Lord afresh, and inflict the deepest wounds upon his bleeding side. Yet the sin, which has set loose many a ribald tongue, which they " tell in Gath, and publish in the streets of Askeloii," which fills the church with grief, and makes the world ring with scandal, which, as when some shot in battle dismounts a cannon, or ex- plodes a magazine, or cuts down a man of mark, is hailed by the enemy with shouts of triumph, even such a sin may say less against a man's piety, than the love that embraces the lost, and a deep interest in the best welfare of others, say for it. Look at Noah beneath the mantle which filial piety has flung over him. Look at Peter denying his master. Look at the saintly David covered with blushes and confusion, and cowering under the fixed and ITS SINS AND SOKKOWS. 43 eagle eye of him, wlio points his finger, say- ing, " Thou art the man I" Such scenes, even such scenes in a man's life, do- not present an aspect of character incompatible with a true and genuine piety. But such an aspect is presented by many a decent man who never brought a scandal on religion, yet never be- held the city to weep over it, never spent one anxious thought on any interests but his own, never spared a tear for any losses but his own, never, so be that his own nest was warmly feathered, troubled himself about others' wants, nor cared wliat came of them, if he ac- complished his own selfish ends. The sins of a good man are but the diseases of life — the irregular palpitations of a living heart ; but that cold indifference, that unfeeling selfish- ness— these are the rigidity and frigidity of death. I remember a remark which once dropped from the lips of an aged minister. The sub- ject of his discourse was our Lord's last suf- ferings. And when lie narrated liow they had brought him to Calvary and nailed him on 44 THE city: the tree, and was telling hew the impenitent thief turned on his cross — a dying man to mock a dj^ng Saviour — he stopped to remark, that while there was almost no sin which a child of God might not fall into, there was one thing which he had never read of a good man doing, and which he believed no good man had ever done or would do — he would never sit in the scorner's chair, nor make a mock of piety. And another such test of real religion this subject presents. It may also be employed to prove the truth or falsehood of our profession. I venture to affirm, that however great his faults may be, no man of God, no man animated by the spirit of Jesus Christ, no child baptized into the nature as well as name of that heavenly Father, who is unwilling that any should perish — no man allied to those angelic beings, who minister to suffering saints, and rejoice in the conversion of the lowest of the lost — no man imbued with the love which, to save the most wicked, most worthless, and most wretched of us, left the Father's bosom to hang in infancy on a ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 45 woman's breast, and bang in death on a bloody tree — will refuse to lend me a willing ear, Avlien I lay open the sores and sprrows, and plead for the souls of men. Of too many this may be true : — "They lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall ; they chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to themselves instruments of music, like David; they drink wine in bowls, and anoint them- selves with the chief ointments, but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph." But I cast myself with confidence upon God'ji people. I resume my subject, and proceed to set forth the sins and sorrows of our cities — fully assured that I shall not meet from lips which the altar-coal has touched, the words with which the murderers of our Lord thrust forth the traitor — " What is that to us? See thou to that." II. The intemperance of the city— or, to uso a plainer term, to call things by their 46 THE city: right names, to be done with sacrificing men's souls and public morals to a spurious delicacy, to make vice as disgusting and detestable as possible, to rub off the paint that conceals the rotten cheek, let me say, in plain broad Saxon, its Drunkenness. Our subject is one for the pulpit. From preachers it claims more notice and warning, more plain denunciation and earnest pleading, than, perhaps, it usually receives. Soma might be better pleased were I, instead of conducting them through loathsome scenes, to be their guide into the temple — to show them, in succession, the sublime mysteries of our faith. But what saith the Lord: "Son of ^lan, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel, therefore thou shalt hear the word from my mouth, and warn them from me. When I say unto the wicked man. Thou shalt surely die, if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked man from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, bui his blood will I require at thine hand." Again, what saith the Lord : " Set the trumpet to thy ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 47 moutli. Blow je the trumpet in Zion^ and sound an alarm in my holy mountain." Are people concerned for the honor of the temple ? How can they so well express this feeling as oy attempting with Jesus to purify its courts? Is the Lord, as some think, coming ? Let us go forth, like John Baptist — forerunners to prepare his way. Have we asked of them who keep ward and watch on the towers of Zion, " Watchman, what of the night ? Watchman, what of the night ?" and got back the startling answer, " The morning cometh and also the night?" The more need have we to abandon all airy speculation, and betake ourselves to the practical work of setting heart and house, town and country, church and state in order. Let us all get ready, and get all things ready for Christ's second coming. Laying aside the telescopes which we had turned in the expected direction, let us gird up our loins, go down into the field of work, make straight what is crooked, and smooth what is rough, and, preparing his way, remove 48 THE oirr: whatever -would offend the eye of our coming King. The apostles were not content to preach only what are called doctrinal discourses. In the texture both of their sermons and epistles, thej wove up doctrine and dut}^ together. These were mingled as the woof and warp of that loom, where the flying shuttle weaves the sail with which men catch the winds of heav- en, and impel the bark onwards to her desired haven. We see these inspired preachers com- ing down to the common business and practi- cal duties of life — down from the throne of God — ^from the heights of the cross — from re- gions of such high speculation, that Peter owns himself to have lost sight of Paul, just as in summer da}^, when watching the lark as she rose from the dewy grass, we have seen her mount up on untiring wing, till she be- came a mere dark speck upon the blue sk}^, and then, although her song still came ringing down, vanished from our field of vision. From heights so lofty the men, who were aioved by the Holy Ghost, descended tc expa- ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 49 tiate on tlie most common topics that belong to practical piety. They taught masters how- to rule, and servants how to work. They taught husbands how to love, and children how to obey. They laid down rules for a bishop's table. They no more thought it be- neath their dignity to tell young women how to attire their heads and dress their hair, than to warn young men to " flee youthful lusts." They lifted up their warning against the sins of ordinary life. They raised beacons on every quicksand and sunken rock. They buoyed out the channel of salvation. De- scribing with downright plainness those fruits of the flesh which exclude from the kingdom, they did not sacrifice God's truth, human vir- tue, and precious souls upon the altar of a false and spurious delicacy. They went in among corruption, like the sunbeam which shows it, but suffers no taint through the con- tact. Descending from the loftiest to the low- liest subjects, theirs was the course of the eagle, which, now on cloud-cleaving wing, mounts upwards — soaring out of sight — and 5 50 THE CITY: now sweeps down to brush the heather, or set- tie in her rocky nest. Overleaping all the laws of spurious delicacy, theirs was the noble spirit of the Eoman. Men placed him at the bar of his country. They charged him with a violation of her laws. Fresh from the fight, covered with the blood of a battle-field where he had led his country's armies to victory, he replied, "I have broken the law, but I have saved the state." And could I, by God's bless- ing, save a sinner, could I pluck some perish- ing one from ruin, could I successfully warn that young man or young woman who, all un- conscious of their danger, are drawing near the brink of destruction, I would throw deli- cacy to the winds, saying, I have broken its laws, but I have saved a soul. With what plainness of speech did Pa,ul v/arn I with what truth and tenderness did he plead! He looks on sinners as a trembling mother on her rash boy, when hanging half way over some beetling cliff*, he stretches down his hand to pluck from the rock its wild and withering flowers. " As mj beloved ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 51 sons," Paul cries, " I warn you." lie exhorts Timothy to rebuke "in season and out of sea- son." He eschews those general denunciations of sin that are as little felt as general confes- sions of it are ; that, like things with broad blunt points, neither pierce the skin nor pene- trate the sore. The apostle enters into partic- ulars. One by one, name by name, sin by sin, he writes out, on several occasions, the long black catalogue of prevailing vices. And in these, as if, like the poisoned garment that stuck to Hercules, it could not be plucked from the body of humanity, this vice of drunk- enness— the sin, the ^hame, the weakness of our nation — finds a never failing and promi- nent place. It is the weakness as well as sir and shame of our nation. The world knows that. Other nations taunt us with that. Nor do scenes at home allow me to forget the strange but stinging * rem ark of a foreigner who said, "It is a blessed thing for the world that you Anglo-Saxons are a drunken race. Such are your powers, and energy, and talent, that otherwise you would have become mas 52 THE city: ters of the world !" So mncli for taking up the subject. Now let us look — 1. To the extent of this vice. First, In our country. ISTo good cause has ever but suffered from injudicious zeal and extravagant statements. Eegard for truth and my very anxiety to see this evil arrested, unite in preventing me from indulging in exaggeration — were it possible here to exag- iterate. I say. possible to exaggerate ; for what flight of fancy, what bold strokes of painting, what graphic powers of description, could convey any adequate idea of the evils and sorrows that march in the train of this direful, and most detestable vice ? Standing on the surf-beaten shore, when ocean, lashed by the tempest into foaming rage, was up in her angry might, I have seen a spectacle so grand ; and where she touched in the valley, arrayed in a gay robe of summer flowers, I have seen nature so beautiful ; and where rat- tling thunders mingled with the roar of the avalanche; while high above the dark mjste- ITS SINS AND SOREOWS. 53 rious gorge, within which the battle of elements was waging, rose clear and serene untrodden peaks of eternal snow, I have looked upon scenes so sublime, as to pass description. Nor color nor words can convey an adequate idea of them. To be understood they must be visited, to be felt they must be seen. Incredible as it may appear, this remark is no less true of many regions of sorrow, and starvation^ and disease, and vice, and devilry, and death, that the smoke-stained walls of these dingy houses hide from common view. These formed for years the painful field of my labors. Let no man fancy that we select the worst cases, that we present the worst side of the picture before them. Believe me, it is im- possible to exaggerate, impossible even trath- fally to paint the effect of this vice' either on those who are addicted to it, or those who suffer from it — crushed husbands, broken- hearted wives, and most of all, those poor innocent children that are dying under cruelty and starvation, that shiver in their rags upon our streets, that walk the winter snows witb 6* 64 THE CITY: naked feet, and with their matted hair, and hollow cheeks, and sunken^ ejes, and sallow countenances, glare out on us, wild and savage- like, from these patched and dusty windows. Besdes, if the extent of this evil has been ex- aggerated, it is a fault that may be pardoned. It is a failing that " leans to virtue's side." Perhaps she exaggerates his danger, but who quarrels with the mother, whose affection for her sailor boy keeps her tossing on a sleepless pillow, praying through the long hours of a stormy night, as her busy imagination fancies that in that wild shriek of the fitful wind she hears bis drowning cry? When the nursery only has caught fire, and a faithful domestic, plucking the babe from a burning cradle, rushes into your chamber, and makes you leap to the cry — the house is all on fire ; will he, that hurries away to save the rest, chal- lenge the exaggeration ? It is as natural to earnestness of purpose and depth of feeling, as a blush to shame, or a smile to happiness, or the flash of the eye to anger. I admit, indeed I assert, that, in regard to ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 55 our own division of the island, tlie extent of this evij has been exaggerated. Kot msiuy years ago, a distinguished patriot rose in the Commons' House of Parliament, and mourn- ing over his fatherland — for he had drawn his first breath on this side of the Border — de- clared that Scotland was the most drunken country, and the Scotch the most drunken nation on the face of the earth. I am well aware that with all the superior privileges which are our boast, we cannot hold up an unabashed and unblushing face before France, or Germany, or Switzerland. In the course of last summer, I spent seven weeks in these countries. I saw Paris at a time of national rejoicing, the population of that gay city all let loose from business to pursue pleasure at their will. If in that mighty crowd there were gloomy looks turned on the royal pomp and scried regiments that conducted to his baptism the infant heir of a throne, which, unlike our Queen's, firmly based on the affec- tions of the people, sits unsteadily on the rim of the wheel of fortune, the eye detected no 56 THE CITY: drunkard. If some were sullen, all were sober; and that feature characterized also those dangerous quarters of the city, where the lowest classes resided, where rebellions had been hatched, and volcanic revolutions had burst forth — burjdng throne and altars in a common ruin. I was also in Brussels during three days of prolonged public fetes All its people were abroad in the streets, and the throng was swelled bj some fifty thousand who had poured into the capital from the various cities of the kingdom. Yet, in these different kingdoms, neither in their mountain hamlets, nor crowded cities, were there pr^ sented so many cases of intemperance in these seven weeks, as may be seen almost any day in Edinburgh, or other large city of our island, in seven short hours. Yet it is not true that Scotland is the most drunken country in the world. This is a mis- statement. As a lover of my country, I am anxious to deny it, and still more anxious to deny it, because I see that men have taken occasion from it to sneer at our religion ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 57 They allege, that our strict observance of the Sabbath is the cause of our intemperance. They say, that if we would sanction public amusements, and open our theatres on the Lord's day, we would check this evil, and nurse our people up in habits of sobriety. Much as I value them, I would not defend our Sabbath observances at the expense of truth. I would not blacken other countries to make my own look fair. But the state- ment is not consistent with fact. The Lap- land mother pours strong brandy over the throat of her sucking child. In the northern parts of Europe, am#ng the nations who in- habit its colder rfsgions, deep drinking is as rife as it is here. Shall we cross the channel ? In Ireland I saw more well-to-do-like men and women leaving a market town on an ordinary market day with unsteady step than I ever saw on a similar occasion on this side the Irish channel. Shall we cross the Border ? During occasional visits to Lon- don, I have seen drunkenness on a scale far more gigantic than during a residence of 58 THE city: twenty yeare, I ever saw it in the lowest districts of this city. In the charges of the English juJges, who has not read how they attribute almost all the crimes of their country, directly or indirectly, to the baneful influ- ences of drink? I have been present in England's high courts of justice, and when panel succeeded panel at the bar, the course of the trials brought out the fact, that the beer-shops were in , almost every case con- nected with the crimes. This false charge, let me remark, has arisen from circumstances, which are rather credita- ble to us than otherwise. I will explain that. There is a city in England, which contains a larger population than our own; and yet it appeared from the police reports that it pre- sented three times fewer cases of drunkenness. This seemed to crown them with glory, and cover us with shame But upon farther in- quiry, we found that they had no right to the laurel There the police conduct the drunk- ard home, and thus his case does not appear upon record ; here, on the other hand, regard- ITS SINS AN'^ OQ BROWS 59 id as a public nuisance, deserving no sucli gentle treatment, lie is conducted to the police office, and so gets his case entered in our sta- tistics of crime. Thus, as you will see, our superior strictness made us, as compared with some other cities, appear worse than we really were. Such also has been the effect of our very efforts boldly to expose this evil ; with God's blessing resolutely to arrest its progress. Thanks especially to our temperance societies, they have thrown a flood of daylight upon the subject. And be it remembered, that the chamber of him, who has opened the shutters, and let in the sunbeams, and is busy sweeping cobwebs from the wall and dust from the floor, foul as it seems, may be less so than ? room more unused to brooms and less fully illuminated with the light of day. We have brought out the evil. We have dragged the monster from his den, for all the world to gaze at him, and hate him, and kill him, if the}'' can. In standing up for my country, in stating what I believe to be nothing more or less than the truth, where or when, let me ask, did our 60 THE city: Scottish Sabbaths ever present such scenes as those that follow ? They appear in evidence given before a committee of the House of Commons. Horrible illustrations of what our religion and country have to suffer from this crime, it is painful, it is loathsome, to read them. Yet he who would cure disease, and save from death, must nerve himself to endure the horrors of the dissecting-room. A member of the vestry, and a governor of the poor, in the parish of St. Margarets, was asked whether the increase in the number of drinkers had increased beyond the number of the inhabitants. He replies, " Yes ; and I think the character of the drinkers has deteri- orated ! Last Sunday morning, I arose about seven o'clock, and looked from my bed-room at the gin-palace opposite to me. I saw it surrounded with customers ; amongst them I saw two coal porters, apparently with women who appeared to be their wives, and a little child, about six or seven years old. These forced their way through the crowd after much strug- gling ; they got to the bar, and came out again ITS SINS AND BOKROWS. 61 in a short time, one of the women so intox- icated as to be unable to walk; she went against the door-post, and then fell flat on the pavement, with her legs partly in the shop. The three who were with her, attempted to raise her, but they were so intoxicated as to be unable to perform that task ; their efforts to perform that were ludicrous, and the doors were opened wide into the shop to admit of the ingress and egress of customers, who pass- ed by laughing at that which appeared to them a most comic scene. After a considerable time they succeeded in raising the woman, but she fell again ; they then brought her to the side, and placed her against the door-post, and there she sat, with her head in her bosom, ap- parently insensible; the little child who was with her came and endeavored to arouse her, by smacking her on. the legs and on the body, and on the face, but she appeared quite insen- sible ; the little thing appeared to be the most sensible of the party. During this time, a woman almost in a state of nudity, with a fine infant at her breast, the only dress being its 6 62 THE city: night shirt, followed by another child about eight years old, an interesting little girl, naked, except a night-shirt, and without either shoes or stockings, followed a wretched looking man into the house, and remained there some time. I saw them struggling through the crowd to get to the bar. They all had their gin ; the infant had the first share from the woman's glass ; they came back to the outside of the door, and there could hardly stand, but ap- peared ripe for quarrel. The little child in her arms cried, and the wretched woman beat it most unmercifully." He states also: — "Last Sunday morning I had occasion to walk through the Broadway a few minutes before eleven o'clock. I found the pavement before every gin-shop crowded ; just as church-time approached, the gin-shops sent forth their multitudes, swearing, and fighting, and bawling obscenely; some were stretched on the pavement, insensibly drunk, while every few steps the foot way was taken up by drunken wretches being dragged to the station house by the police." ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 63 The same witness was asked :— Has the habit of drinking among women much in- creased, so far as your observation extends? He answers : — " I think it has extended, and the children appear to be initiated to the drinking of spirits from their infancy ;" and he calls the special attention of the Committee to the fact, " that the poor wretched girls who live by prostitution, and who are the best cus- tomers to the gin-shops, die oif in about four years." Now mark how that brief course of vice and its terrible end stand out in contrast to the unholy gains of those whe feed its fires. This witness states, that, in three gin-shops close by him, " more than twenty thousand pounds is year by year taken for spirits con- sumed upon the premises ; and that within a circle containing a population of 40,000 peo- ple, not less than £50,000 is expended on gin alone !" Oh, if that is a frightful vice which eats, like a cancer, into a woman's breast, that is a frightful trade, which, fungus-like, lives upon the corruption of human nature — the decay of our noblest faculties, the death of 64 THE cmr: our best affections. He is, for himself, a wretched fool, who builds up a fortune out of sin and misery. One blow of death's hand will shatter it, and what will he do when he has to confront all those who accuse him of their ruin — when he stands at the bar of God as ragged and naked as that wretched woman whom first a villain spoiled of her virtue, and threw her away, and next he plunders of her shame and money — casting her forth upon the cold, hard street. This evidence, no doubt, was given somo years ago ; but with our own eyes we have seen spectacles of sin and misery in London bad as anything that witness has depicted. Let us hear no more therefore of the strict Sabbaths of Scotland driving our people into the arms of intemperance. It was the fair face of England these loathsome spectacles blotted. They were to be seen in her metrop- olis, under the shadow of religion's antique and venerable towers, near by the palace of royaltj', and in the immediate vicioity of the halls of legislation. Wh'le our senators, fired ITS SINS AND SORROWS. <5b 'with the ambition of old Kome, push Britain'^ conquests to distant lands, and flare up with indignation at the slightest insult offered to her flag, let them learn that these scenes most of all dishonor us. It is neither my pleasure, nor my part, to speak " evil of dignities ;" but having regard only to the interests of truth, of humanity, of God's glory and man's good, I will be bold to say, that unless those into whose hands we have committed the affairs of our country, cease to swell the revenues of the state out of the vices of the people, and promptly apply every possible cure to these crying evils, they will peril the existence and betray the best interests of our empire. If conquests are to be pushed abroad, while our deadliest enemies are left to make such havoc at home, our legislators will stand open to the charge of Solomon :— " The eyes of a fool are in the ends of thp earth." A remark, let me add, not more applicable to the state than to the church, if in seeking to convert the hea- then abroad, she forgets the heathen at home. 6* 66 THE CITY; Secondly, Let us look more particularly at the intemperance of our own city. She has no occasion to sit proudly on her hills and look down on others. We have cause to thank God for that Act of Parliament by Nyhich, in answer to the voice of an all but unanimous people, the drinking-shops of Scot- land were closed, and all traffic in intoxicat- ing liq.iors pronounced illegal, from Saturday night till Monday morning. We give God thanks i »r that. What we gained, we intend to keep. What w^e won, w^e shall resolutely defend. We have no intention of retreating. On the Cv atrary, w^e desire to see the law of the Sabb ith extended to every day of the week, and all shops opened for the mere pur- poses of d finking shut — shut up, as a curse to the comm mity — as carrying on a trade, not less than t le opium-shops of China, incurably pernicious The evil, which cannot be cured, condemns itself to death. But, am id the improved aspect of our Sab- baths, we cannot forget that before the Act whicl/ T Itave alluded to was passed, in the ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 67 more than forty thousand visits paid on the Lord's day to the drinking shops, we had a fact, terribly symptomatic of the extent and virulence of the disease. Nor can we shut our eyes to week-day scenes. You have only to walk our streets to see how this vice rages far and wide, and goes about them " like a roaring lion, seeking whom it may devour." I should be ashamed to walk some districts of this city with a native of that ancient nation with which we are now at war, and to which, God grant that we may soon be reconciled. ''The wrath of man worketh not the right- eousness of God ;" and who would not rather see our fleets with flowing sails approach these distant shores to land a freight of merchan- dise. Bibles, and messengers of peace, than cannon, and serried regiments, and other ar- maments of war? With a pagan from any part of that vast empire, but one which our opium-trade and greed of gain had demoral- ized, I say that I should be afraid to fmd my- self in many districts of this city of colleges, and churches, and hospitals and benevolent 68 THE city: societieSj and people of Mgli Christian wortL and unquestionable piety. Amid the idle groups of bloated women, and half-naked children, and wrecks of men, filling up almost every close-mouth and foot of filthy stair, with our path crossed by some reeling drunkard, who launches himself into the common sewer, with so many shops under Government license, turning health into dis- ease, decency into tattered rags, love into es- trangement or bitter hatred, young beauty into loathsomeness, woman's natural modesty into loud and coarse efirontery, mothers' milk into poison, mothers' hearts into stone, and the image of God into something baser than a brute ; how could I look that sober, upright pagan in the face, and ask him to become a Christian ? I must be dumb, lest he should turn round on me to ask : — Are these Chris- tians ? Be these the fruits of Christianity ? I would repel the charge. But what if he should follow it up with a blow less easy to parry? Pointing up to those here who are rolling in wealth, or enjoying the abundant ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 69 comforts of their homes, or the ordinances of their worship, he might next ask : — What are these Christians doing? What do they to save their fellow-creatures from miseries that move a pagan to tears ? What to save them from crimes unpractised by those whom you call the followers of the false prophet, by us to whose distant land you send your mission- aries to turn us from our fathers' idols? What could I say? How would I look? With what answer could I meet the withering sar- casm :— "Physician, heal thyself?" But let us leave the lowest class and rise into a higher region. Not that it would alter my position or abate my zeal if I believed that it was none but the lowest of the low who fell victims to this vice. They are our brethren. They shiver in the cold, and pine under hun- ger, as well as we. They have feelings, sensi- tive to wrong and pain, as well as we. They have heart-strings to be broken, as well as we. They have souls to be saved, as well as we— souls as precious and priceless as our own. A diamond is a diamond whether it lies buried 70 THE CITY: in a dust heap, or flashes on beautj^s finger, or is set in a golden crown. I hold a beggar's soul to be as valuable as a king's ; and that he who dies in a hovel, goes on the same footing before a God in judgment, as the hero, whose death has thrown a nation into mourning, and who is borne to the tomb, through crowded streets, with the honors and parade of a public funeral. Go not away, I pray you, under the delu- sion, that like a fog-bank which lies thick and heavy on the valley, when heights are clear, and hill tops are beaming in the morning sun, intemperance is confined only to the lowest stratum of society. I know the contrary. Much improved as are the habits of the upper and middle classes — and we thank God for that, extending jis that improvement has done to those who stand beneath them in the social pyramid — and we bless God also for that, and hoping.that this improvement, like water per- colating a bed of sand, will sink down till it reaches and purifies the lowest stratum, we have met this vice in all classes of society. It TTS SINS AND SORROWS. 7l bas cost many a servant her place, and — sLill gTfiater loss — ruined her virtue. It has broken the bread of many a tradesman. It has wrecked the fortunes of many a merchant. It hft5 spoiled the coronet of its lustre, and sunk raiJsi into contempt. It has sent respect- auility to hide its head in a poor-house, and prejented scenes in luxurious drawing-rooms, which have furnished laughter to the scullions m the kitchen. But it has done worse things than break the ' staff of bread, lower rank, wreck fortunes, and crown wealth with thorns. Most accursed vice ! What hopes so precious that it has not withered, what career so promising that it has not arrested, what heart so tender, what tem- per so fine, that it has not destroyed. w4mt things so noble and sacred that it has not blasted? Touched by its hell-fire fisme the laurel crown has been changed into ashes on the head of mourning genius, and, the wings of the poet scorched by it, he who once played m the light of sun-beams and soared aloft into the skies, has basely crawled in the dust. Par- 72 THE city: alysing the mind, even more than the body, it has turned the noblest intellect into drivelling idiocy. Not awed by dignity, it has polluted the ermine of the judge. Not scared away by the sanctity of the temple, it has defiled the pulpit. In all these particulars, I speak what I know. I have seen it cover with a cloud, or expose to deposition from the office and honors of the holy ministry, no fewer than ten clergymen, with some of whom I have sat down at the table of the Lord, and all of whom I numbered in the rank of acquaintances or friends. The frightful extent of this vice, however, \s perhaps most brought out by one melan- sholy fact. There are few families amongst us CO Iiappy as not to have had some one near and dear to them either in imminent peril — banging over the precipice — or the slave of ■r. temperance, altogether "sold unto sin." Considering the depravity of human nature, and the temptations to which our customs and c' re urn stances expose us, that fact, however melancholy and full of warning, does not as ITE SINS AND SORROWS. 73 lonish us. .But, to see a father or mother, to see a brother or sister venturing on the edge of a whirlpool, in whose devouring, damning vortex the J themselves have seen one whom the J loved engulphed, does fill us with aston- ishment. I knew a mother once, who saw her only son drowned before her eyes. Years came and went ere she could calmly look upon the ocean, or hear without pain the roar of the billows where her boy was lost. How many have a better or rather a bitterer cause for hating the sight of the bowl I Considering how many are lost — drowned there, I do won- der that so few Christian, or no Christian, but loving parents, candidly consider the question, whether it be not their duty to train up their children according to the rule, "Taste not, touch not, handle not." I have wondered most of all to see a father indulging in the cup that had been poison, and death to his sou. Why does he not throw it away — cast it from him with horror I Taking the knife, red with the blood of his child — making sure that it shall be the death of none else — why does he 1 T4 THE city; not fling it after the lost one — down, down into the depths of hell ? Standing amid havoc and ruins, with so many in our neighborhoods, and in our churches, whom this vice has utterly wrecked, what prayer so suitable as this : — " 0 God ! lift up thy feet unto the perpetual desolations I Thine enemies roar in the midst of thy con- gregations. They break down the carved work thereof with axes and with hammers. They have cast fire into thy saiictuary. They have defiled the dwelling-place of thy name. 0 God ! how long shall the adversary re- proach? Shall the enemy blaspheme thy name for ever ? Have respect unto th}' cove- nant! The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of horrid cruelty. Forget not the congregation of thy poor for ever. Arise, 0 Lord, and plead the cause that is thine own." What, now, although the evil may have been exaggerated? It has been alleged that not less than Sixty Millions of money are spent year by year on intoxicating stimulants n^ SINS AND SORROWS. 75 within the United Kingdom. Keduce the sum by one-half, let it be but Thirty, and apart altogether from the ruin it works in so many cases on all that is good, and noble, and blessed, and beautiful, and holy, how great a waste ! Are there no hungry ones to feed, no naked to clothe, no orphans to adopt, no unhappy children left uncared for and untaught, no favorable outlets for our money on the heathenism of home or foreign fields ? There are. And when the poor aro starving, when souls are perishing, when we are straitened for want of funds to supply the gospel at home, or send missionaries to tell the heathen world of Jesus and his love, how shall we face a day of judgment — we who spend a sum equal to half the whole revenue of the British empire on what is in all cases a luxury, in most cases an injury, and in many a most fatal indulgence ? Before we are sum- moned into the Master's presence, it is well to be thinking how we are to meet the demand, " Give an account of thy stewardship." Again, it has been stated that through the 76 THE CITY: direct and indirect effects produced bj these stimulants, Sixty thousand lives are annually lost. Reduce that also by one-half, and what a quotient remains ! Thirty thousand human lives offered in annual sacrifice at the bloody shrine of this idol I Death is bitter enough in any circumstances to the bereaved. However precious our comforts be, all memory of the dead is more or less painful. We put out of «ight the toys of the little hands that are mouldering in the silent grave. The picture of the dear one, whose eyes our fingers have closed, and whose face the shroud has covered, hangs veiled upon the wall. The remem- brance of the loved and lost will throw on life's brightest scenes the cold shadow of a cloud, v/hich discharges its burden of grief sometimes in a few drops, sometimes in a shower of tears. But over how many of these thirty thousand deaths is there the mourning that has no hope I What incurable wounds have they inflicted ! What sad memo- ries have they left! They talk of war! What is war to that? Give me her bloody ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 77 bed, buiy me or mine in a soldier's rather than in a drunkard's grave! Innocent chil- dren, killed off bj cold and hunger, slowly starved to death — coffins that hold broken hearts — woman's remorse for her virtue lost, gnawing like a vulture at life's quivering vitals — poor, pitiable wretches, with palsied hands and shrivelled limbs, in loop-holed poverty, who would give the world to be able, as in better and bygone days, to love their wives and bless their children, and en- joy the esteem of their neighbors, sinking into death by inches, or staggering at a sudden call up to the bar of judgment! Thirty thousand such cases, year by year, in this kingdom! Than that, give me rather the battle-field. With a good cause to fight for, and bugles sounding the assault, give me the red rush of gallent men who dash across the lines of death, and leaping in at every breach and embrasure, strike for the liberties of man — falling with their mother's Bible in their breast, a mother's ani Jesus' name mingled on their dying lips! '''No drunkard shall 78 THE CITY: ITS SINS AND SORROWS. inherit the kingdom of Grod." But of those who sleep in Jesus, whether thej died with gentle and holj voices in their ear, or amid the crash of musketry and roar of canon — " I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, from henceforth, yea, saith tlie Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and theii works do follow them." SERMON III. ** When he beheld the city, he wept over it" — Lctkb xlx. 41. THEKE is a remarkable phenomenon to be seen on certain parts of our own coast. Strange to say, it proves, notwithstanding such expressions as the stable and solid land, that it is not the land but the sea which is the stable element. On some summer day, whet there is not a wave to rock her, nor breath ot wind to fill her sail or fan a cheek, you launch your boat upon the waters^ and, pulling out beyond lowest tide mark, you idly lie upon her bows to catch the silvery glance of a pass- ing fish, or watch the movements of the many curious creatures that travel the sea's sandy bed, or, creeping out of their rocky homes, wander its tangled mazes. If the traveller is surprised tc find a deep-sea shell embedded in the marbles ot a .iiountain peak, how groat is 80 THE CITY. your surprise to see beneatli you a vegetation foreign to the deep I Below your boat, sub- merged many feet beneath the surface of the lowest tide, away down in these green crystal depths, you see no rusting anchor, no mould- ering remains of some shipwrecked one, but in the stf.nding stumps of trees you discover the mouldering vestiges of a forest, where once the wild cat prowled, and the birds of heaven, singing their loves, had nestled and nursed their young. In counterpart to those portions of our coast where sea-hollowed caves, with sides the waves have polished, and floors still strewed with shells and sand, now stand high above the level of the strongest stream-tides, there stand these dead decaying trees — en- tombed in the deep. A strange phenomenon, which admits of no other explanation, than this, that there the coast line has sunk beneath its ancient level. Many of our cities present a phenomenon as melancholy to the eye of a philanthropist, as the other is interesting to a philosopher, or geologist. In their economical, educational. ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 81 moral, and religious aspects, certain parts of tlijs city bear palpable evidence of a corre- sponding subsidence. Not a single house, nor a block of houses, but whole streets, once from end to end the abodes of decency, and industry, and wealth, and rank, and piety, have been engulphed. A flood of ignorance, and misery, and sin, now breaks and roars above the top of their highest tenements. Nor do the old stumps of a forest, still stand- ing up erect beneath the sea-wave, indicate a greater change, a deeper subsidence, than the relics of ancient grandeur, and the touching memorials of piety whioh yet linger about these wretched dwellings, like evening twilight on the hills — like some traces of beauty on a corpse. The unfarnished floor, the begrimed and naked walls, the stifling, sickening atmos- phere, the patched and dusty window — through which a sunbeam, like hope, is faintly stealing, the ragged, hunger-bitten, and sad- faced children, the ruffian man, the heap of straw where some wretched mother, in mutter- ing dreams, sleeps off last night's debauch, or 82 THE CITY: lies UDsbrouded and uncoffined in the ghastli- ness of a hopeless death, are sad scenes. We have often looked on them. And they ap- pear all the sadder for the restless play of fancy. Excited by some vestiges of a fresco- painting that still looks out from the foul and broken plaster, the massive marble rising over the cold and cracked hearth-stone, an elabo- rately carved cornice too high for shivering cold to pull it down for fuel, some stucco flow- ers or fruit yet pendant on the crumbling ceil- ing, fancy, kindled by these, calls up the scenes and actors of other days — when beauty, ele- gance, and fashion graced these lonely halls, and plenty smoked on groaning tables, and where these few cinders, gathered from the city dust-heap, are feebly smouldering, hospi- table fires roared up the chimney. But there is that in and about these houses which bears witness of a deeper subsidence, a yet sadder change. Bent on some mission of mercy, you stand at the foot of a dank and filthy stair. It conducts 3^ou to the crowded rooms of a tenement, where — with the excep- ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 83 tion of some old decent widow who has seen better days, aud when her family are all dead, an-d her friends are all gone, still clings tc God and her faith in the dark hour of adver- sity and amid the wreck of fortune — ^from the cellar-dens below to the garrets beneath the roof-tree, you shall find none either reading their Bible, or even with a Bible to read. Alas I of prayer, of morning and evening psalms, of earthly or heavenly peace, it may be said that the place that once knew them, knows them no more. But before you enter thee door-way, raise your eyes to the stone above it. Dumb, it speaks of other and bet- ter times. Carved in Greek or Latin, or our own mother tongue, you decipher such texts as these: — "Peace be to this house." ^'Ex- cept the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." ^' We have a building of God, an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens." t " Fear God ;" or this, " Love your neighbor." Like the mouldering rem- nants of a forest that once resounded with the melody of birds, but hears nought now save 84 THE city: the angrj dash or melancholy m jan of break- ing waves, these vestiges of piety furnish a guage w hich enables us to measure how low in these dark localities the whole stratum of society has sunk. Now there are forces in nature which, heav- ing Tip the crust of our earth, may convert the sea bed again into forest or corn land. At this moment these forces are in active opera- tion. Y/orking slowly, yet with prodigious power, they are now raising the coasts of Sweden in the old world and of Chili in the new. And who knows but these subterranean agencies, elevating our own coasts, may yet restore verdure to those deep sea sands — giv- ing back to the plough its soil, to waving pines their forest land. And thus on our shores, redeemed from the grasp of the ocean in some future era, golden harvests may fall to the reaper's song, and tall forests to the woodman's axe. We know not whether this shall happen. But I do know that there is a force at work in this world — gentle, yet pow- erful— commonly slow in action, but always ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 85 sure in its results, which, mightier than vol- canic fires, pent-up vapor, or rocking earth- quake, is adequate to raise the most sunken masses of society, and restore the lowest and longest neglected districts of our cities to their old level — ^to set them on the platform even of a higher Christionity. Can these people ever be raised? Can those "dry bones live?" "Where is the Lord God of Elijah ?" are questions, distress- ing questions, which, when worn and weary, and disappointed, and cast down, and heart- sick, we have been often tempted to ask. 01 such times, we could say with David : — " We had fainted, unless we had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." But this voice of God came sounding down from Heaven, saying ; — " Though je have lain among the pots, yet ye shall be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold." When ready to sink under a sense of our own feebleness, it said to us :— " The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels ; the Lord 8 86 THE CITY: is among tLem> as in Sinai, in the holy place.** To the question, Can these lost ones be recov- ered? the answer came in these brave, and bold, and cheerful terms : — " I will bring again from Bashan ; I will bring my people again from the depths of the sea, that thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the same." And, as he stood on the heights of inspiration, looking far away into distant time, and com- manding an extent of prospect hid from com- mon eyes, we heard the prophet announce the approaching of the promised event, a glorious gospel change : — " They have seen thy go- ings, 0 God ; even the goings of my King in the sanctuary. The singers went before, the players on instruments followed after ; among them were the damsels playing on timbrels. There is little Benjamin with the ruler, the princes of Judah with their council, the princes of Zebulon and the princes of Naphtali. Thy God hath commanded thy strength. Strength' en, O God, that which thou hast wrought for ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 87 US. Sing unto God, ye kingdoms of the earth 0 sing praises unto the Lord." Yes. To put new vigor into his sinking energies, a man has only to " remember the years of the right hand of the Most High." How does the gospel of Jesus Christ, crowned with triumphs, point her sceptre not to fami- lies, nor hamlets, nor cities, but whole nations, raised from the lowest barbarism and the bas- est vices ! We cannot despair so long as we do not forget, that the power of God, and the wisdom of God, and the grace of God, have nothing tc« do within our shores which they have not done already. Are our lapsed classes rude and uncultivated, ignorant and vicious? So were our forefathers, when Christianity landed on this island. She took possession of it in Jesus' name, and conquered bold savages, whom the Komans could never subdue, by the mild yet mighty power of the gospel. God's " hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor is his ear heavy that it cannot hear." Therefore, whatever lengtl of time may be re- 88 THE city: quired to evangelize our city masses, however long we may be living before the period when a " nation shall be born in a day," whatever trials of patience we may have to endure, whatever tears we may have to shed over our cities, our tears are not such as Jesus wept, when he beheld Jerusalem. No. Jerusalem was sealed to ruin — doomed beyond redemption. Our brethren, our cities are not so. We have not to mourn as those who have no hope. As on a summer day I have seen the sky at once so shine and shower, that every rain-drop was changed by sun- beams into a falling diamond, so hopes mingle here with fears, and the promises of the gospel shed sun-light on pious sorrows. "Weep we may ; weep we should — weep and work, weep and pray. But ever let our tears be such as Jesus shed beside the tomb of Lazarus, when, while weeping, groaning, he bade the bystand- ers roll away the stone — anticipating the mo- ment when the grave at his command would give up its dead, and Lazarus be folded, a liv- ing brother, in the arms that, four days ago, ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 89 had swathed his corpse. Be such our tears and anticipations. Sustained by them we shall work all the better ; and all the sooner shall our heavenly Father embrace the most wretched of these wretched outcasts. Faith may be cast down, but cannot be destroyed. There is no reason, because we are "per- plexed," ever to "despair." Black as the prospect looks, the cloud presents one aspect to the world, and another to the Christian. I stand on the side of it that lies next the sun. There, with the sun shining at my back and the black cloud in my eye, I see a radiant bow which spans its darkness, and reveals in heavenly colors mercy to a fallen world. " It Is a faithful saying, and worthy of all accepta- tion, that Jesus Christ came into the w^orld to save sinners." With the eye of faith fixed on that, we resume our work, and proceed still further to lay bare the state of the city — its sorrows for Christian balm, its sins for Chris- tian cure. We have turned your attention to the ex tent of intemperance, let us now 8* 90 THE city: Secondly, Attend to the effects of this vice. The Spartans, a brave, and, althougli hea- thens, in many respects a virtuous people, held intemperance in the deepest abhorrence. When Christian parents initiate their children in drinking habits, and — as we have seen and wondered at — teach them to carry their glass to infant lips, copy whom they may, the wise old Spartans are not their model. They were not more careful to train the youth of their country to athletic exercises, and from their boyhood and almost their mothers' breasts to '' endure hardship as good soldiers" of Sparta, than to rear them up in habits of strictest, sternest temperance. It formed a regular branch of their national education. Why should it not of ours ? It would be an incal- culable blessing to the community. It would do incalculably more to promote domestic comfort, to guard the welfare of families, and secure the public good, than other branches ihat, while they go to improve the taste and polish the mind, put no real pith or power into the man. Well, once a year these Greeks ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 91 assembled their slaves, and, Laving compelled them to drink to intoxication, thej turned them out — all reeling, staggering, besotted, brutalized — into a great arena, that the youths who filled its benches might go home from this spectacle of degradation to shun the wine- cup, and cultivate the virtues of sobriety. Happy country ! thrice happy land I where drunkenness was to be seen but once a year, and formed but an annual spectacle. Alas I we have no need to employ such unjustifiable means even for so good an end I We do not require to get up any annual show, from the pulpit to tell, or on the stage of a theatre to represent, its accursed, and direful, and dis- gusting effects. The lion is daily ravaging on our streets. He goes about "seeking whom he may devour." Once a year, indeed, when church-courts meet, our city may present a spectacle which fools regard with indifference, but wise mec with compassion and fear. A jiale and hag- gard man, bearing the title of "Eeverend," stands at tbe bar of his church. Not daring 92 THE city: to look up, lie bends there with his head bur- ied in his hands, blushes on his face, his lips quivering, and a hell raging, burning within him, as he thinks of home, a broken-hearted wife, and the little ones so soon to leave that dear sweet home, to shelter their innocent heads where best, all beggared and disgraced, thej may. " Ah, my brother" there ! And ah, my brethren here, learn to '* watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation." See there the issue of all a mother's anxieties, and a father's self denying and parsimonious toil, to educate their promising, studious boy. In this deep darkness has set for ever a brilliant college career. Alas I what an end to the sol- emn day of ordination, and the bright day of marriage, and all those Sabbaths when an af- fectionate people hung on his eloquent lips I Oh I if this sacred office, if the constant hand- ling of things divine, if hours of study spent over the word of Grod, if frequent scenes of death, with their most awful and sobering so- lemnities, if the irremediable ruin into w^hich degradation from the holy office plunges a ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 93 nan and his house along with him, if the un- speakable heinousness of tbis sin in one who held the post of a sentinel, and was charged with the care of souls— if these do not fortify and fence us against excess, then, in the name of God, *'let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall." You are confident in your sh-ength, so was he. You can use with- out abusing, so once could he. I tell you T have seen ministers of the gospel charged hy fame, dragged to the bar of their church, and degraded before the world as drunkards, whom once I would have as little expected to fall as I expect some of you— as you believe it pos- sible that this vice shall yet degrade me from the pulpit, and cause my children to blush at mention of their fcither's name. Such casea are trumpet-tongued. Their voice sounds the loudest warning. In such a fall we hear the crash of a stately tree. Leave an ungodly world— deaf, stone-deaf to the voice of Provi- dence—to quaff their cups, and make the fall of ministers "the sorg of drunkards;" leave them to say that all religion is hypocrisy, and 94 THE city: see, in such a case, but the dropping ol a mask from falsehood's face. Let that which embold ens them in sin teach you to stand in awe. For it seems to me as if, disturbed in his graVe by the shock of such an event, the old proph- et, wrapped like Samuel in his mantle shroud, had left the dead to cry in the ears of all the living, who regard with indifference the fall of a minister, "Howl, fir-trees, for the cedar is fallen." On leaving a church-court, where he has seen so strange and dreadful a spectacle as a man of cultivated mind, a man of literary habits, a man of honorable position, a man of sacred character, sacrifice all, — ^the cause of religion, the bread of his family, the interests of his children, the happiness of his wife, his character, bis soul, — all, to this base indul- gence, no man, after such a terrible proof of the might and mastery of this tyrant vice, will be astonished at anything he may encounter in our streets. Yet if the soul of Paul was "stirred within him," — stirred t(.) its deepest depths, — when he saw the idolatry of Athens, ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 95 I think that lie who can walk from this neigli- boring castle to yonder palace, nor groan in spirit, must have a heart about as hard as the pavement that he walks on. The degradation of humanit}^, the ragged poverty, the squalid misery, the suffering childhood, the pining, dying infancy, oh, how do these obliterate all the romance of the scene, and make the most picturesque street in Christendom one of the most painful to travel. They call the street in Jerusalem, along which tradition says that a bleeding Saviour bore his cross, the Via Dolorosa; and I have thought that our own street was baptized in the sorrows of as mourn- ful a name. With so many countenances thai have misery stamped on them as plain as if it were burned in with a red-hot iron — hunger siarmg at us out of these hollow eyes — drink- palsied men, drink-blotched and bloated wo- men— sad and sallow infants who pine away into slow death, with their weary heads lying so pitifully on the shoulders of some hali' de-humanized woman — this poor little child, who nevei smiles, without shoe or stocking 96 THE CITY: on his ulcered feet, shivering, creeping, limp- ing along with the bottle in his emaciated hand, to buy a parent drink with the few pence that, poor hungry creature, he would fain spend on a loaf of bread, but dare not — the whole scene is like the roll of the prophet, '' written within and without, lamentations, mourning, and woe." How has it wrung our heart to see a poor ragged boy looking greed- ily in at a window on the food he has no one to give him, and dare not touch, — to watch him, as he alternately lifted his naked feet, lest they should freeze to the icy pavement. He starves in the midst of abundance. Ne- glected among a people who would take more pity on an ill-used horse or a dying dog, he is a castaway upon the land. Of the throngs that pass heedlessly by him to homes of com- fort, intent on business or on pleasure, there is no one cares for him. Poor wretch I 0 if lie knew a Bible which none has taught him, how might he plant himself before us, and bar our way to church or prayer-meeting, saying, us he fixed on us an imploring eye, " Pure re- ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 97 ligion and undefiled before God" is to feed me — is to clothe tliese naked limbs — is to fill up these hollow cheeks — is to pour the light of knowledge into this darkened soul — is to save me — is not to go to house of God or place of prayer, but first coming with me to our miser- able home, " to visit the widow and fatherless in their affliction, and keep thy garments un- spotted from the world." You can test the truth of these statements. You have only to walk along the street to verify them. Yet bad as it looks, and bad as it is, the street reveals not half the evil. I know that some look with suspicion upon our statements. They doubt whether matters be- low are so bad as we report. They insinuate that surely we are exaggerating existing evils. Well, there is nothing more easy, although there might be many things more noble, than to lie beneath bright skies, and amid gay company, and on a flowery sward, and dis- miss with an incredulous smile the claims of suffering humanity. It were more like a man and a Christian to throw yourself into 9 98 THE city: the bucket, seize the chain, go down into the pit and put the matter to the proof. We invite jou to do that which will rudely dis- sipate every doubt, and bring you up, a better and wiser man, to say with Sheba's Queen, " The half was not told me." Mean- while, come along with me, while I again travel over some bygone scenes. Look there! In that corpse you see the cold, dead body of one of the best and god- liest mothers it was ever our privilege to know. She had a son. He was the stay of her widowhood — so kind, so affectionate, so loving. Some are taken away from the " evil to come ;" laid in the lap of mother earth, safe beneath the grave's green sod, they hear not and heed not the storm that rages above. Such was not her happy for- tune. She lived to see that son a disgrace, and all the promises of his youth blighted and gone. He was drawn into habits of intemperance. On her knees she pleaded with him. On her knees she prayed for him. How mysterious are the ways of Provi- rrS SINS AND SORROWS. 99 dence I She did not live to see him changed ; and with such thorns in her pillow, such dag- gers, planted by such a hand, in her heart, she could not live. She sank under these griefs, and died of a broken heart. We told him so. With bitter, burning tears he owned it; charging himself with his mother's death — confessing himself a mother's murderer. Crushed with sorrow, and all alone, he went to see the body. Alone, beside that cold, dead, unreproaching mother, he knelt down and wept out his terrible remorse. After a while he rose. Unfortunately — how unfor- tunate that a spirit bottle should have beer left there — his eye fell on the old tempter. You have seen the iron approach the magnet. Call it spell, call it fascination, call it anything bad, demoniacal, but as the iron is drawn to the magnet, or as a fluttering bird, fascinated by the burning eye and glittering skin of the serpent, walks into its envenomed, ex- panded jaws, so was he drawn to the bottle. Wondering at his delay, they entered the room; and now the bed hold? two bodies 100 THE city: — a dead motlier, and her dead-drunk son. What a sight ! what a humbling, horrible spectacle I And what a change from those happy times, when night drew her peaceful curtains around the same son and mother — he, a sweet babe, sleeping, angel-like, within her loving arms ! " How is the gold become dim, the most fine gold changed !" Or look there. The bed beside which you have at other visits conversed and prayed with one who, in the very bloom and flower of youth, was withering away under a slow decline — is empty. The living need it; and so its long, and spent, and weary tenant lies now, stretched out in death, on the top of two rade chests beside the window. And as you stand by the body — contemplating it — in that pallid face lighted up by a passing sun-gleam you see, along with lingering traces of no common beauty, the calmness and peace which were her latter end. But in this hot, sultry, summer weather, why lies she there uncoffined ? Drink has ieft us to do that last office for the dead. Her father — how unworthy the name ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 101 of father — when liis daughter pled with him for his soul, pled with him fcr her mother, pled with him for her little sister, had stood bj her dying pillow to damn her — ^fiercely damning her to her face. He has left his poor, dead child to the care of others. With the wages he retains for drink, he refuses to buy that lifeless form a coffi.n and a grave ! Or look there. You have found a young man, the victim of an incurable malady, sink- ing into the tomb. Dying is hard enough work amid all the comforts which wealth, and kindness, and piety can command; but in that winter time, with the frosty wind blowing through the broken panes, he is shivering while he seeks in the Bible its precious comforts ; and how much his body is emaciated is too plainly visible beneath that single threadbare coverlet. You could not have stood that; no more could we. And where, at our next visit, are the warm comforts charity had provided ? They have gone for drink ! Gone for drink ! For such purpose, what incarnate demons have plucked 102 THE CITY: the blankets from that wasted form — steeling their iron hearts against his cries, his struggles, his unavailing tears ? Accursed vice ! that can sink man beneath the brutes that perish. The barbarous deed was done bj^ a father's hand! That father, instigated and aided bj her who had suckled him on her breast, a breast twice withered — hy worse than age, deformed and dried up I Did I saj sinks man beneath the brutes that perish ? It is a libel on creation to speak of a drunkard as a brute. The bear, when she re- fuses to desert her cub, when she makes the most daring, desperate efforts to protect her offspring, when, rearing herself on her hind feet, she stands up growling to face the hunter, and offer her shaggy bosom to his spear, ex- torts our admiration ; as does the little crea- ture which, when the spear is buried in a mother's heart, leaps on her dead body, and, giving battle to the dogs, attempts bravely, though vainly to defend it. Look at this case, and that. How beautiful is nature, how base is sin I Dr. Kane tells a story of a savage ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 103 man in. those arctic regions, where God has poured such affection into the bosom of the fiercest animals, which excites our pity. Noluk, when all other families in the time of famine had fled from their sick, remained faithful to his wife. She was dying. From waging fierce battle with the monsters of the deep, scaling the slippery iceberg, leaping the cracks of the ice-floe, homeward over the snowy wastes he drove his sledge each night, with food for her. The evening of his last visit arrives. He approaches the rude stone- hut, looks in, and through a window sees his wife a corpse, and his infant son sucking at her frozen breast. Instinct moved him to enter, pluck away the child, and make a daring effort to save its life and his own. But the burden of a sucking babe, the press- ing fears of famine, these mastered parental affection ; and, claiming our pity for the grief that stood in his eye and wrung his heart, he turned his dogs southward, nor crossed the threshold. But what emotions do the cases 1 have told 104 THE CITY: you. of awaken? To be matched by many and surpassed by some that I could tell — sam- ples of the stock) what passion can they, what passion ought they to move, but the deepest indignation ? Nor would I, however fiercely it may run, seek to stem the flood. The deep- er it flows, the higher it rises, the stronger it swells and rolls, so much the better. I would not seek to stem, but to direct it — directing it not against the victims, but against the vice. I pray you do not hate the drunkard ; he hates himself. Do not despise him ; oh, he cannot sink so low in your opinion as he is sunk in his own. Your hatred and contempt may rivet, but will never rend his chains. Lend a kind hand to pluck him from the mire. With a strong hand shatter that bowl — re- move the temptations which, while he hates, he cannot resist. Hate, abhor, tremble at hia sin. And for pity's sake, for God's sake, for Christ's sake, for humanity's sake, rouse your- selves to the question, What can be done? Without heeding others — w^iether they follow or whether they stay — rushing down to the ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 105 beach, throw yourself into the boat, push away, and bend on the oar, like a man, to the ♦vreck. Say, I will not stand by and see my fellow-creatures perish. They are perishing To save them I will do anything. What lux- ury will I not give up? What indulgence will I not abstain from ? What customs, what shackles of old habits will I not break, that these hands may be freer to pluck the drown- ing from the deep? God my help, his word my law, the love of his Son my ruling motive, I shall never balance a poor personal indul- gence against the good of my country and the welfare of mankind. Brethren, such resolu- tions, such high, and holy, and sustained, and self-denying efforts, the height of this evil de- mands. Before God and man, before the church and the world, I impeach Intemperance. I charge it with the murder of innumerable souls. In this country, blessed with freedom and plenty, the word of God and the liberties of true re- ligion, I charge it as the cause — whatever be their source elsewhere — of almost all the pov 106 THE CITY: ertj, and almost all tlie crime, and almost all the misery, and almost all the ignorance, and almost all the irreligion, that disgrace and afflict the land. " I am not mad, most noble Festus. I speak the words of truth and sober- ness." I do in my conscience believe that these intoxicating stimulants have sunk into perdition more men and women than found a grave in that deluge which swept over the highest hill-tops — engulphing a world, of which but eight were saved. As compared with other vices, it may' be said of this, '' Saul has slain his thousands, but David his tens of thousands." 8. Consider what cure we should apply to thit evil. The grand and only sovereign remedy for the evils of this world is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. I believe that. There is no man more convinced of that than I am. But he rather hinders than helps the cause of religion who shuts his eyes to the fact, that, in curing souls, as in curing bodies, many things [TS SINS AND SORROWS. 107 may be important as auxiliaries to the remedy, wliich cannot properly be considered as reme- dies. In the day of his resurrection Lazarus owed his life to Christ ; but they that day did good service, who rolled away the stone. They were allies and auxiliaries. And to such in the battle which the gospel has to wage with this monster vice, allow me in closing this discourse to direct your attention. And I remark — First, TJiat the legislature may render essential service in this cause. This is an alliance between church and state which no man could quarrel with. Happy for our country, if by such help, the state would thus fulfil to the church — the woman of prophecy — this apocalyptic vision : — " And the serpent cast out of his mouth, water as a flood, after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. And the earth helped the woman. And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth " Many people feel no sympathy with the 108 THE city: sufferings of the lowest class. They are not hard-hearted ; but engrossed with their own affairs, or, raised far above them in social po- sition, they are ignorant of their temptations, and trials. Therefore they talk ignorantly about them ; and seldom more so than when they repudiate all attempts of the legislature by restrictive Acts of Parliament to abate, if not abolish, this evil. They have their reme- dies. Some plead for better lodgings and sanitary measures ; which we also regard as highly valuable. Some put their faith in edu- cation— an agent, the importance of which, to the rising generation, it is impossible to over-. estimate. Some seem to have no confidence in anything but the preaching of the gospel. To one or other of these, or the combined lu- ll uence of them all, they trust for the cure of drunkenness — repudiating and deprecating all legislative interference. Now, I should like as much as they to see the very lowest of oui people so elevated in their tastes, with minds so cultivated, and hearts so sanctified, that they could resist the temptations which on ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 109 every hand beset them. But thousands, tens of thousands, are unable to do so. They must be helped with crutches till they have ac- quired the power to walk. They must be fenced round with every possible protection until they are " rooted and grounded in the love of God." In the country I have often seen a little child, with her sun-browned face and long golden locks, sweet as any flower she pressed beneath her naked foot, merry as any bird that sung from bush or brake, driv- ing the cattle home ; and with fearless hand controlling the sulky leader of the herd, as with armed forehead and colossal strength he quailed before that slight image of God. Some days ago, I saw a different sight — such a child, with hanging head, no music in his voice, nor blush but that of shame upon his cheek, leading home a drunken father along the public street. The man required to be led, guided, guarded. And into a condition hardly less helpless large masses of our people have sunk. I don't wonder that they drink. Look at their unhappy and most trying cir- 10 110 THE city: cumstances. Many of them are born with a propensity to this vice. They suck it in with a mother's milk ; for it is a well-ascertained fact that other things are hereditary besides cancer, and coDsumption, and insanity. The drunken parent transmits to his children a proneness to his fatal indulgence. The foul atmosphere which many of them breathe, the hard labor by which many of them earn their bread, produce a prostration which seeks in stimulants something to rally the system, nor will be debarred from their use by any pros- pect of danger, or experience of a correspond- ing reaction. With our improved tastes, our books, our recreations, our domestic comforts, we have no adequate idea of the temptations to which the poor are exposed, and from which it is the truest kindness to protect them. They are cold, and the glass is warmth. They are hungry, and drink is food. They are miserable, and there is laughter in the flowing cup. They are sunk in their own esteem, and the bowl or the bottle surrounds the drunkard with a bright-colored halo of self-respect, and, ITS SINS AND SORROWS. Ill SO long as the fumes are in his brain, he feela himself a man. " They drink to forget their poverty, and remember their misery no more." Such indeed has been the only training, such are the physical, economical, moral, and religious conditions of large masses of the people, that their safety lies, not in resisting temptation, but escaping it. None know that better than themselves. How would thou- sands hail and bless the day, which, shuttmg up the drinking-shops, would preserve them from temptations which are their ruin, and to which they at length passively yield them- selves ; although, as one said, they know theii doors to be the way to hell. Yet not passive- ly, until this fatal pleasure has paralyzed the mind more even than the body. Many strug- gle hard to overcome this passion. There is a Ions and terrible fight between the man and the serpeni that has hnn in his coils ; between the- love of wife and children and the love of drink. Never more manfully than some of them did swimmer struggle in his hour of agony — breasting the waves and straining il2 THE cirr: every nerve to reach the distant shore Would Parliament but leave this matter to these peo- ple themselves — would tbej for once delegate their powers of legislation to the inhabitants of our lowest districts — we are confident that, by their all but unanimous vote, every drink- ing-shop in theii neighborhoods would be shut up. The biids, which are now drawn into the mouth of the serpent, would soar aloft on free and joyous wing to sing the praises of the hand that closed its jaws, of the heel that crushed its head. And so long as rehgion stands by — silent and unprotesting against the temptations with which men, greedy of gain, and Governments, greedy of revenue, surround the wretched victims of the basest vice — it appears to me an utter mock- ery for her to go with the word of God in her hand, teaching them to say, "Lead us not into temptation." As a man, as well as minister of that blessed gospel which recognizes no distinction between rich and poor, I protest against the wrongs of a class that are to the full as unfortunate a.'» ITS SINS AND SORROWS. IIH thev are sfuilty. They deserve succor rather tnan censure. They are more to be pitied than punished. And, assuming the office of their advocate, I wish to know why the upper classes of society should enjoy from the legis- lature a protection denied to those who stand more in need of it ? Gambling-houses were proved before Parliament to be ruining the youth of the aristocracy. Nobility complained Coronets and broad acres were in danger. Parliament rose to the rescue. She put forth her strong hand, and by a sweeping, summary, most righteous measure, put the evil down. It was also proved in Parliament that Betting- houses were corrupting the morals of our merchants' clerks, our shopmen, our trades- men, and others of the middle classes of so- ciety. Once more Parliament rose up in its migbt, threw its broad shield over wealth and commerce, and closed every betting-house in the metropolis. Who talked then about the freedom of trade ? When the honor of noble families, or the wealth of our merchants, and the honesty of their servants demanded pro- 10* Ill THE CITT: tection, wlio talked about the liberty of the subject? Who proposed to leave these evils to be met by education and such means as education? I don't complain of, but com- mend the measures which Parliament adopted. Only, I want to know, if the virtues of hum- ble families and the happiness of the poor are less worthy of protection than the wealth of bankers, and the honors of an ancient nobil- ity ? I want to know if the bodies of the higher and wealthier classes are of better clay, or their souls of finer elements, than those of the very lowest of the people ? Yet I would undertake to prove that, year by year, thou- sands and tens of thousands of our poor lose character, virtue, fortune, body and soul, in those drinking-shops that glare upon the pub- lic eye — which the law does not forbid, but license. For every one the gambling or bet-- ting-house ruined, they ruin hundreds. I wish that those who govern this noble coun- try should be able to say with Him who gov- brns the universe, " Are not my ways equal ?" N^or let our legislators be scared from their ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 115 duty in this case, any more than tbcy were in the other, by the allegation that to shut up the drinkmg-shop will not cure but rather ag- gravate the evil, by leading to illicit traffic and secret drinking. The removal of the temptation may not always cure the drunk- ard. But it will certainly check the growth of his class, and prevent many others from learning his habits — until sanguine men might entertain the^blessed hope that, like the mon- sters of a former epoch, which now lie en- tombed in the rocks, drunkards may be num- bered among the extinct races, classified with the winged serpents and gigantic sloths that were once inhabitants of our globe. The subject before us is eminently calculated to illustrate the profound remark of one, who was well acquainted with the temptations and circumstances of the poor. He said : — " It is justice, not charity, that the poor most need." And all we ask is, that you be a^ kind to them as to the rich ; that you guard the o'le class as carefully as you guard the other from the temptations peculiar to their lot. I am sorry 116 THE citt: to say — ^but truth and the interests of those who, howevt/i* sunk and degraded, are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, require that I should say — that this is not done. The "poor," says Amos, *'are sold for a pair of shoes," and with us they are sold to save the wealth of the rich. In this I make no charge which I am not prepared to prove. For example : — Certain measures were proposed in Parliament with the view of promoting the comforts and improving the moral habits of the common people. It was admitted that these, by intro- ducing weak French and Ehenish wines in room of ardent spirits and strongly intoxicat- ing liquors, would be attended with the most happy and desirable result. Yet they were rejected. And rejected because* their adop- tion, although it saved the people, would dam- age the revenue. As if there was not money enough in the pockets of the wealthy, through means of other taxes, to meet the debts of the nation and sustain the honor of the Crown. How different the tone of morals even in China I The ministers of that country proved ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 117 to their sovereign that he would avert all danger of war with Britain, and also add im- mensely to his revenue, if he would consent to legalize the trade in opium. He refused, firmly refused, nobly refused. And it were a glorious day for Britain, a happy day for ten thousand miserable homes — a day for bonfires, and ju' ilant cannon, and merry bells, and banner, d processions, and holy thanksgivings, which saw our beloved Queen rise from her throne, and in the name of this great nation address to her Lords and Commons the mem- orable speech of that pagan monarch : — " I will never consent to raise my revenue out of the ruin and vices of my people." With such a spirit may God imbue our land ! — " Even so come, Lord Jesus. Come quickly." Secondly, ThoA the example of abstaining from all intoxicating liquors would greatly aid in the cure of this evil. No principle is more clearly inculcated in the word of God, and none, carried out into action, makes a man more Christ-like than self-denial, " If meat make my brother to of- 118 THE CITY: fend, I will eat no flesh while the world stand- eth, lest I make my brother to offend." That is the principle of temperance, as I hold it. I cannot agree with those who, in their anxiety for good, attempt to prove too much, and con- demn as positively sinful the moderate use of stimulants. Bat still less sympathy have I with those who dare to call in Jesus C hrist to lend his holy countenance to their lu curious boards. It is shocking to hear men attempt to prove, by the word of God, that it is a duty to drink — to fill the wine-cup and drain off the glass. I was able to use without abusing. But seeing to what monstrous abuse the thing had grown, seeing in what a multitude of cases the use was followed by the abuse, and seeing how the example of the uj^per classes, the practices of ministers, and the habits of church mem- bers were used to shield and sanction indulg- ences so often carried to excess, T saw the case to be one for the apostle's warning : — " Take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to them that are ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 119 weak." Paul says of meat oifeied unto an i(Jol : — " Meat commendeth us not to God , for neither if we eat are we the better, neither if we eat not are we the worse." And will any man deny, that, save in medical cases, I can with the most perfect truth adopt the words of inspiration, and say of these stim- ulants what Paul says of meat : — " Drink commendeth us not to God ; for neither if we drink are we the better, and neither if we drink not are we the worse." On the contra- ry, the testimony of physicians, the experience of those who, in arctic cold or Indian heat, have been exposed to influences the most try- ing to the constitution ; the experience also of every one who has exchanged temperate in- dulgence for rigid abstinence, have demon- strated that, if we drink not, we are the bet- ter. There is no greater delusion in this world than that health, or strength, or joyousness is dependent on the use of stimulants. So far as happiness is concerned, we can afford to leave such means to those who inhabit the doleful dens of sm. They cannot want them, Th*»y 120 THE CITY. have to relieve the darkness with lurid gleama. They have to drown remorse in the bowl's ob- livion. They have to bury the recollection of what they were, the sense of what they are. and the foreboding of what they shall be — as one of them said, ^'we poor girls could not lead the life we do without the drink." Grant that there were a sacrifice in abstain- ing, what Christian man would hesitate to make it, if by doing so he can honor God and bless mankind ? If by a life-long abstinence from all the pleasures which the wine-cup yields I can save one child from a life of mis- ery, I can save one mother from premature grey hairs, and griefs that bring her to the grave, I can save one woman from ruin, bringing him to Jesus I can save one man from perdition, I should hold myself well re- paid. Living thus, living not for myself, when death summons me to my account, and the Judge says, Man, where is thy brother? I shall be found walking, although at a hum- ble distance, in the footprints of him who took bis way to Calvary. He said, '*If any man ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 121 will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." This cross, which has been held high in the battle- field by men nobly fighting for their faith, which rose above the scafibld red with mar- tyr's blood, which has been borne by mission- aries to pagan lands, may be carried into our scenes of social enjoyment, and, a brighter ornament than any jewels flashing on beauty's breast, may adorn the festive table. If this abstinence is a cross, all the more honor to the men who carry it. It is a right noble thing to live for God and the good of men. I attempt to dictate on this subject to no man. Believing it to be one specially open to the apostolic rule, " Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind;" I would yet venture to appeal to my brethren in the min- istry, and to the members of every Christian church. There cannot be a doubt, not the shadow of a doubt, that if, devoting your- selves Christ-hke to the glory of God and the good of men, you saw it to be your duty to embrace the principle of abstinence, the result XI 122 THE city: would be remarkable. Such would be the influence of your example within your own household, and outside in your different neigh- borhoods, and such also the power which you could exercise in the Parliament of our coun- try, that intemperance with all its direful damning consequences would be, to a great extent and in time, banished from the land. "What a land ours then would be ! Believed from this mill-stone which bangs about her neck, and weighs her down and bends her giant power to the earth, into what an attitude and height of power would sbe rise ? Who then would dare to insult her flag ? Who then would dare to cross her path, when she went forth in her might and virtue to assert the lib- erties of the world — to break the fetters of the slave or fight the battle of the oppressed. She would hear no more taunts from the slave-holders of the West or the despots of the South. Her piety, and sobriety, and virtues, preserving salt, elements of national immor- tality, she might hope to be exempted from the fat€ of all preceding empires, that, one ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 123 after another, in unfailing succession, nave gone down into the tomb. This moral revolution in our national habits, this greatest of all reforms, every one can en- gage in. Women and children, as well as men, can help it onwards to the goal. It is attainable, if we would only attempt it. It is hopeful, if we would but give the subject a fair consideration. Why should not the power of Christianity, by its mighty argu- ments of love and self denial, lead to the disuse of intoxicating stimulants, and so achieve that which Mahommedanism and Hindooism have done ? Must the cross pale before the crescent ? Must the divine religion of Jesus, with that God-man upon the tree for its invincible ensign, blush before such rivals, and own itself unable to accomplish what false faiths have done? Tell us not that it cannot be done It can be done. It has been done — done by the enemies of the CI OSS of Christ — done by the followers of an impostor — done by worshippers of stocks and stones. *' And their rock is not like oui 124: THE city: its sins and sorrows. Rock/' If that is true — and it cannot be gainsaid — I may surely claim from every man who has faith in God, and loves Jesus, and is willing to live for the benefit of mankind, a candid, a full, and a prayerful consideration of this subject. But, whatever be the means, whatever the weapons you will judge it best to employ, when trumpets are blowing in Zion, and the alarm is sounding and echoing in God's holy mountain, come — come to the help of the Lord against the mighty, crowd to the standard, throw yourself into the thick of battle, and die in harness fighting for the cause of Jesus. So "to live is Christ, and to die is gain." SERMON IV. ** When he beheld the city, he wept over it" — Lxikb xlx. 41. A REMARKABLE incident occurred dur- iiig the last unhappy, and — since it was waged between brethren, sprung of a common parentage, and holding a common faith — I will add, unnatural war between our country and America. We had taken a prize. A very gallant young of&cer was placed in command of her. Unfortunately for us, as the event proved, her original captain and part of his crew, were not transferred to another ship, but allowed to remain on board. The British lieutenant had a number of our own brave men sent along with him — a force sufficient to work the ship, and, in a fair stand up fight, to overpower the prisoners, should they at- tempt to retake the vessel. Hoisting British colors, they parted company wdth the captur- 11* 126 THE city: ing ship, and with our officer on the quarter- deck made homeward with their prize. On- ward the ship ploughs her way through the billows, and all seems safe. After some time, the American captain accosts our officer on the deck. He desires him to give up his sword and the command of the vessel. Surprised, indignant at such a strange and insolent de- mand, he prepares to resist. Whereupon the American, drawing a pistol from his belt to meet the other's sword, conscious of his power, but unwilling to shed the blood of a gallant man, coolly added : — " You must surrender, your men are all drunk below." The officer, however, did resist, and was shot dead. His life was thrown away ; his gallant bravery was of no a-^^ail. Intemperance had betrayed the ship — ^the men had all been drenched with rum and laudanum. This story is as instructive as tragic. For that ship, won not by fair fighting, but a foul trick, carrying at her mast head foreign colors, with a new commander on her quarter-deck, liev ere t below in irons, and her head biought ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 127 round, and bearing awaj to the coasts of the enemy, presents to my eye a picture of the fate of many. By the same instrumentality they are seduced — betra}ed into the hands of the Adversary. By intemperance, also, they are " taken captive of the devil at his will." Had there been no intoxicating liquors on board, had she sailed under the temperance flag, as it is called, that ship had not been lost, nor had her crew pined in foreign prison, nor had that gallant man, who had otherwise re- turned to his mother's arms, rich with prize money, and wearing laurels on his brow, lain there — a bleeding corpse upon the deck. There is no doubt of that. No man will at- teijipt to deny that. And we appeal to your candor, if this is not as true, that thousands of our fellow-creatures had never been lost, many a poor servant girl had never forfeited her character and lost her place, many a trades- man had never lost his employment and been reduced to beggary, many a merchant had never lost his business and become a bank- rupt, many a woman had never lost her virtue 128 THE CITV. and wrecked her peace, many a man and wo- man bad never lost botli soul and body, if they had practised habits of abstinence. Drink has been their ruin. And their ruin had never been, if, so to speak, they had sailed the voyage of Kfe with no intoxicating liquors on board. That ruse de guerre so successfully played on the " high seas," is one of Satan's most common, e very-day services. These stimulants w^eaken the reason, while they in- flame the passions. They qu'cken corruption, whilst they stupify conscience. And I believe — and who does not ? — that but for the use of them, thousands would never have taken that first step in sin, which, step by step, and step by step, has conducted their feet down to ruin. • Convinced as I am — and, as I presume you are — of the innate depravity of human nature, I think that we have no need to increase the dangers of temptation and arm it with addi- tional powers. They who carry gunpowder on board are careful of fires and lights — nor careless even of a spark, lest that, reaching the magazine, should blow the ship out of the ITS SINS AND SORROW^. 129 «vater, and the crew into eternity. Believing as I do in the weakness of our nature, I think that we have little need by anything to in- crease our proneness to fall. The path of a man, even of a man on the highway to heav- en, is never one of perfect safety, and is often one of imminent danger. It resembles those mountain-passes in the Higher Alps, where the narrow road, its broken surface, and the dizzy depths below, require a steady foot and the coolest head ; one false, one stumbling step, and you are gone, over the rocks, sheer down a hundred fathoms, where the angry torrent foams in the bottom of a gloomy gorge, white as the snows it flows from ; or — no hap- pier fate — you are left lying, mid- way down, on some projecting crag, a mangled mass — a ban- quet for the vultures. Many such dangerous passes there are in the journey of life. The very next turn, for anything we know, may bring us on one. Turn that projecting point which hides the path before you, and you are suddenly in circumstances which demand that reason be strong, and conscience be tender, 130 THE CITY: and hope be bright, and fliith be vigorous, and the prayer be ready to spring from our lips, " Lord, hold up my goings, that my foot- steps slip not." I leave this part of my subject ; but before I leave it, let me appeal to the love and a,nx- ieties of Christian parents — of every parent. If you believe, as a foolish mother once said to me, when gently warning her to guard her 3hild, " There is no ill, sir, about my child," I have nothing now to say, but, God pity the child that has such a mother. Hoping better things of you, brethren, let me put it to you, whether you are not most likely to preserve your children from many temptations, and lay a good foundation for their well-doing, and your own parental comfort, by training them up in the early and entire disuse of what is the ruin of so many families, the curse of so many homes, and what, if not taught to .like, they have no craving for. Apply to this, as to other things, the lesson of holy Scripture, '' Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 181 it." Surel}^, oh surely, we have no need, either for ourselves or children, to create temptations — rashly to court dangers which we can avoid. It is a hard fight at the best to get to heaven. We shall get fighting enough without challenging it. We should leave vaporing fools to repeat the bravado of the Philistine. Let no man step out from the ranks of the cross, even from the side of Christ, to bid defiance to the devil, saying, '' Give me a man to fight with." Our safety lies most, not in fighting but in fleeing tempta- tion— in ever remembering this solemn truth, '' The righteous scarcely are saved." These views I press on no man, but present to the candid and prayerful consideration of all. But if these views do not meet your favor, nor commend themselves to yonr con- science before God, if you think it best and wisest to leave yourselves and your children, and others, exposed to the terrible temptations which I think it Christian prudence to avoid, then there is the more need that you be fully armed for the battle. To save our country 132 THE CITY: 4 and our religion, there is the more need that you apply a prompt and effectual remedy to other two great evils, to which, as belonging to the sins and sorrows of the city, I now re- quest your attention. m. Ignorance, oi want of education. First, Let us look at this evil as it exists among the lowest classes. Our blessed Lord was born in a stable. And the stable which marked the beginning, like the cross which stood at the end of his life, has been always regarded as a prominent feature of his humiliation. Yet I have seen some who were born in even more humiliat- ing circumstances. Many years ago — for the subject is not new to us — we were attempting to sound the depths of city-sins and city-sor- rows. When engaged in this pursuit, we visited the police-office at dead of night. It was a chamber of horrors. There, lost, guilty, degraded humanity was represented by a wretched object dying beside the fire, in the last stages of consumption — ^the sister of a min- ITS SINS AJSTD SORKOWS* 133 ister of the gospel. She had led a life of the low- est infamy, and, a houseless outcast, was drain- ing off there the dregs of a bitter cup. But if that and many other cases filled us with hor- ror, some moved our pity ; -none more than two sleeping infants, the twin offspring of a poor wandering creature who had given birth to them the day before within the walls of that police-office. What a fate was theirs 1 What an ominous beginning! What a life of hardship, cruelty, sin, and misery lay be- fore these two unconscious innocents ! The shadow of their birth-place was thrown black and forward on their future destiny. It need- ed no seer to stand by that rude crib and tell their fortune. They had hardly a chance in life. They had heaven in death; and no- where had death looked less grim than in that grim birth-chamber, had he come and plucked these two buds from the parent-tree, that they might blow in heaven on Jesus' breast. These infants were types of a class, with which, although somewhat better born, yet in no way better bred, our large cities swar.n, 134 , THE city: People — people who find it difficult enough, with all the appliances of a good education and religious training, to keep their children in the paths of honesty and rectitude — won- der that there is "so much crime. If they saw what some of us have seen, and knew what some of us have known, they would still won- der, but wonder there was so little crime. To expect from those who have been reared in the darkest ignorance, and in a very hot-bed of temptations, anything else but crime, is sheer folly. A man might as well wonder that he does not see wheat or barley growing in our streets — where plough never goes, and no seed is sown. What can a farmer expect to find in a field left fallow, abandoned to nature, to the floating thistle-down and every seed furnished with wings to fly, but evidence of his own neglect in a rank, vile crop of weeds? Look at the case of a boy whom I saw lately. He was but twelve years of age, and had been seven times in jail. The term of his imprison- ment was rjm out, and so he had doffed the ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 135 prison garb and resumed his own. It was the depth of winter ; and having neither shoes nor stockings, his red, naked feet were upon the frozen ground. Had jou seen him shivering in his scanty dress — the misery pictured on an otherwise comely face — the tears that went dropping over his cheeks as the child told his pitiful story — you would have forgotten that he had been a thief, and only seen before you an unhappy creature more worthy of a kind word, a loving look, a helping hand, than the guardianship of a turnkey and the dreary soli- tude of a jail. His mother was in the grave. His father had married another woman. They both wer^ drunkards. Their den, which is in the High Street — I know the place — contained one bed, reserved for the father, his wife, and her child. No couch was kindly spread for this poor child, and his brother, a mother's son — then also immured in the jail. When they were fortunate enough to be allowed to lie at home, their only bed was the hard bare floor. I say fortunate enough, because on many a 136 THE city: winter night their own father hounded them out. Kuffian that he was, he drove his in- fants weeping from the door, to break their young hearts and bewail their cruel lot in the corner of some filthy stair, and sleep away the cold dark hours as best they could — crouching together for warmth, like two houseless dogs. A friend listened with me to that cruel tale ; and when he saw the woe, the utter woe in that child's face, the trembling of his lip, the great big tears that came rolling from his eyes, and fell on one's heart like red-hot drops of iron, no wonder that he declared, with indig' nation flashing in his eyes, " They have not a. chance, sir, they have not a chance." In cir- cumstances as hopeless, how many are here — in every large city of this kingdom ! Yonder castaway, who has seen the ship go down, with all her shrieking crew, and, float- ing away upon his raft, has been borne along by sea currents over a shoreless ocean, has got a chance. These weeds, that are swung by the waves and give verdure to the deep, these Bea-shore birds, on which his lank and hungry ITS SINS AND SORROWS. IS/ dog stands ready to spring, indicate the neigh- borhood of land ; and we almost seem to S'^e it looming through the fog-bank, on which his eye, kindling with hope, and shaded by his hand from the glare of the sun, is fixed, as he bends forward with such intent and eager gaze I But to the castaway of the land, however, " hope is none." Kone, unless God in heaven pity him, and fill our hearts with one wave ^m the ocean of his infinite love. By the depraved habits of their parents, by the dan- gerous associations of the street, by their cold and nakedness, their hunger and houselessness, and most of all, I think, by the very hostility bred within them against a community that has only added punishment to neglect, and "persecuted them whom God had smitten," they are impelled on evil. We do nothing to instruct them. We leave them exposed to temptations, before which the best of us would go down. Thus we first condemn them to crime, and then condemn them to punishment. And where is the justice of that? I have often felt, that h?d society meted out to me 12* 13S THE city: the measure which she had meted out to them, I would have hated her, and sought vengeance for my cruel wrongs — unless this nature had been changed and mellowed and tempered by the grace of God. Thanks be to God, the eyes of the nation — ^long, too long sealed — are now opening to its duty. We hail the dawn of a better day. The time is coming, God speed it on ! when, as they read how thousands of children, whom we left to grow up in ignorance and sin, were thrown into jail, were punished for crimes whicb their parents trained and their circumstances forced them to — were shut up, mere boys and girls, for weary months of solitude, within the four walls of a cell which they left stamped with infamy, and doomed to ruin — a succeeding generation will read the story of our inhu- manity and injustice with feelings of aston- ishment and indignation. There is gross injustice in all this. We visit the iniquity of tlie fathers upon the children. We punish the innocent and let the guilty go free. And our treatment of these poor suffering creatures irS SINS AND SORROWS. 139 is calculated to excite feelings in every just and generous mind, if not as intense, yet akin to the horror with which we read, how in the days of George II. they brought out two in- fants, a boy of twelve and a girl of eleven years old, and strung them up on the same gallows before the face of an amazed and angry heaven. Meanwhile, there are thousands, and tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands, of the children of this land, who are growing up strangers to the benefits and blessings of edu- cation. Ignorance is their sole inheritance. And in regard to them, I may put into the mouth of our country the very complaint which the prophet puts into the mouth of God, " My people are destroyed for lack of knowl- edge." They are punished for it, impover- ished for it, imprisoned for it, banished for it, and hanged for it. The " voice heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping," falls upon our ear. Eachel is weeping for her children. Victims of parental cruelty, I call on humanity to bless them wi+h the protection 140 THE city: which she exteuds in this country to thd lower animals. Subjects in time past only of pun- ishment, I next call on justice to sheathe the sword, and hft up her shield, and throw it over the heads of these unhappy children. And next I call on religion to leave her tem- ples, and, like a mother seeking a lost child, to go forth to the streets, and gather in these infants for Jesus' arms — save these gems for a Saviour's crown. Second, Let us look at this evil as it exists among the ivorhing classes. The want of education is not confined tc the lowest of the people. Many of the chil- dren of our working classes begin the business of life before they have finished that of edu- cation, and not a few of them even before they have begun it. The condition of our labor market lies as a heavy curse upon the nation. It is an evil poorly compensated by the growth of wealth, and that more general dif- fusion of the comforts of life in which we otherwise heartily rejoice. Unfortunately, in ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 141 fant labor is remunerating now-a-days in the way of work, as it used to be in the way of mendicancy. In consequence of this, God's providence and man's plans are in collision — in direct collision. Heaven and earth are at war. The roar of machinery deafens the ear of tender childhood. The boy grows pale upon the loom, and the girl grows stunted by the whirling wheels, who should be drinking in knowledge at its fountains, or rushing from school to play with the lambs upon the flow- ery sward, or chasing the butterfly by the laughing stream, or gathering health and strength, beauty and symmetry where the bee collects her honied stores, for working days and winter-time. The click of shuttles and deafening noise of the manufactory are in ears that should be filled with no sound but the shouts and laughter of play, the melody of singing birds, or the hum of the busy school. The harmony of nature is disturbed, and the effects of that disturbance on the physical, moral, and religious condition of our people are lamentable— and threaten to be more so. 142 THE city: Children are able to support lefore thej have sense to guide themselves. Before God has fitted or ever intended them to be so, thej are independent of parental control. Hence do- mestic discord, hence household rebellion, hence the defiance of parental authority. Too early removed from school, hence the spread of ignorance. Thrown in their very child- hood into the company of hoary sin, hence their morals are corrupted. They are initiated into the mysteries of vice before they have the power to practise it. Without a parent's hand to guide the reins, before reason and principle have bad time to assume their legit- imate authority, the passions get it all theii own headlong way. And in the fate of a carriage which has none to drive, but strong wild horses to drag it on; or, in the fate of a bark which. Laving broken loose from her moorings, catches the gust in her wide-spread sail, ere helm is hung or helmsman stands by the wheel — ^in that inevitable crash, in that shattered wreck — are symbolized the fiite of many. Born in our great centres of manu- ITS SINS Ax\D SOKHC'WS. 143 facturi', sent to work when they should be sent to school or continued at it, and earning wages sufficient to maintain themselves before reason is developed and principles are confirmed, the J laugh at parental control, and in seeking to be their own masters become the slaves of their own master passions. This is neither time nor place to show the extent of this evil, unless to say that, while the most extraordinary errors may lurk under general statistics, the public judging by them alone, may cherish the delusion that all m right when much is wrong. The actual truth may be best arrived at by selecting some par- ticular locality, and subjecting it to a close and searching examination. We have done so in the Pleasance— a district of the city where we are about to build a church, and where, through our missionary and his allies, we have labored for four years with such re- markable success. There are worse, far worse districts than that in this city There are many much worse in every large city in the kingdom. Yet there, in an area containing 144: THE CITY: two thousand of a population, we found, when we entered on our labors, no fewer than two hundred children growing up without educa- tion— who should have been at school, and were not. Thej were not without schools, yet with these in the neighborhood tbej were without schooling. They had teachers within reach of them yet they were not taught. Now this is a very instructive fact. The plain and very important inference to be deduced from that fact is this, that while it is the duty of the state to provide the means of education, it is no less her duty to see that they are used. In the United States of America — a country where, perhaps, more than in any other, the value of education is thoroughly understood — the means of educating all the people are amply and in many instances freely provided. Yet by one of their last reports, complaints appear to come from every part of the country, that many parents neglect to send their chil- dren to school. This evil has begun to grow in America, which in our own land has reach- ed so gigantic a size. Years of experience ITS SINS AND SORROWS 145 and observation, whicli were spent among the lower and lowest classes of the people, have produced in my mind the rooted conviction that, although public or private benevolence may plant schools in our streets, thick as trees in the forest, the evil never will be cured. From many a dark locality the city will con- tinue to cry, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge," unless the state insist on this, that every child who should be, shall be at school. From a system of trade which offers up our children in sacrifice to the Moloch of money, and builds fortunes in many instances on the ruins of public morality and domestic happi- ness— from the cupidity of some parents, and the culpable negligence of others — helpless rhildhood implores our protection. We laugh at the Turk who builds hospitals for dogs, but leaves his fellow-creatures to die uncured and uncared for. And we forget that dogs and horses enjoy by Act of Parliament, a protection from cruelty among ourselves, which is denied to those whose bodies and 13 146 THE city: whose souls we leave savage parents to neg- lect and starve. I lay it down as a principle, which cannot be controverted, and which lies, indeed, at the very foundations of society, that no man shall be allowed to rear his family, a burden, and a nuisance, and a danger to the community, lie has no more right to rear wild men and wild women, and let them loose among us, than to rear tigers and wolves and send them abroad on our streets. What four- footed animal is so dangerous to the communi- ty, as that animal which unites the uncultivated intellect of a man to the uncontrollable pas- sions of a beast ? We have a right to insist that this shall not be. Some rights I may waive. I may waive my right to a fortune. I may waive my right to the honors and emoluments of my office. I may abandon my claim to a competent liv- >ng from those to whom I minister, and turn tent-maker like the great apostle. But if I have a right to interfere for the good of others, to shield the oppressed, to save the perishing, to instruct the ignorant — by any act on my ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 147 part to benefit and bless my country — tliat is a right which I have no right to waive. God requires me to claim it and carry it into effect. Religion thus lends her holy sanction to the state, when she insists on a universal educa- tion. She commands society to take these children under its protection, and see to it, that all of them are trained through means of the school to be of service to the state. The parent who does not educate his children, should be regarded as a man who is not using his liberty, but is guilty of licentiousness. When will men cease to confound the two, and cease by applying the name of liberty to that which outrages the rights and destroys the liberties of others, to remind us of the say- ing of the celebrated woman who, when they were carting her to the guillotine, as the tum- bril passed a statue that had been erected to Liberty rose to exclaim : — " 0 Liberty, what crimes have been committed in thy name I" To ally that sacred name to the culpable and cruel neglect of parents who neither do their duty to their children nor to the state, is 148 THE city: to help the cause of despotism, and make the name of liberty " stink in the nostrils" of the people. Let our country apply a prompt remedy to this evil, and upon the land which, with judgment to distinguish between liberty and licentiousness, and humanity to espouse the cause of the wronged, spread her mother wings over the least of these little ones, we may expect the blessing of Him who folded infants in the arms that sustain the world, and said, " Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." TV, The extent of irreligion in our large cities. Much irreligion may be found among relig- ious professors. To use a common saying, all is not gold that glitters. And there needs no other evidence of the fact, that irreligion does exist among religious professors, than the cold, callous, heartless indifference with which many hear of the sins and look upon the sor- rows of their fellow-creatures. They could not do so if they were baptized into the nature ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 149 as well as the name of Jesus Christ. In some cases the loss of a cattle-beast will affect the former, the loss of a few pounds on some spec- ulation will distress the merchant, the loss of her raven locks, and the rose upon her cheek, and the fading charms that won admiration, will grieve the woman, more than the loss of immortal souls. Alas, the best of us have cause to pray for a deeper baptism in the spirit of Him, who, beholding the cit}^, wept over it ! Blessed Jesus ! blessed Saviour, and blessed pattern ! how didst thou leave the de- lights of heaven and thy Father's bosom, on a mission of most generous mercy ! Thy love grudged no labor! Thine eye refused no pity ! Thy ear was never shut against the story of distress ! Tliy band was always ready to relieve the sufferer ! From thy cradle to thy grave, thy whole life was passed in daily acts of loftiest self-denial, and, with the blood trickling down thy brows, and the heavy cross on thy lacerated back, upon thy way to Cal- vary, to save the vilest wretches and the chief of sinners, how dost thou turn round on us to 13* 150 THE CITY: say, "If an J man will come after me, let Lim den;y himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me! For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? or, what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels, and then he shall reward every man according to his works." The best of us have come far short, no doubt, of thus following Christ. Defects are many and great — ^leaving us no hope of salva- tion, but in the mercy of the Father, and the merits of the Son. Nor do we deny that there is a numerous class who follow the banner of the cross, but are, so to speak, mere camp followers — never fighting in the front of battle, nor found, but on a day of parade, among the ranks of the fighting men. They are professors of religion, because it is r(^,pu table and respectable to be so ; because it keeps qcet an otherwise uneasy conscience: ITS SINS ANE SORKOWS. 151 because it helps tliem on in the world. They hold some such place in the Christian, as was occupied in the Jewish host, by the mixed multitude which, although not of Israel, fol- lowed Israel out of Egypt. But if that be certain, no less certain is this, that while in some cases there is a profession of religion without its reality, there is in no case the reality of religion without its profession. There may be leaves and blossoms also on a tree which bears no fruit, but without leaves and blossoms there can be none. The tree which, in high mid-summer, when skies are warm, and birds are singing, and flowers are blooming, and woods are green, stands there a skeleton form with its naked branches, has no life in it. It must be a cumberer of the ground. Now, bearing this in mind, what an appal» ling picture of irreligion do our large towns present ! Many years ago it was alleged that in our own city, containing a population of more than one hundred and fifty thousand Bouls, there were not fewer than forty thou- 152 THE CITY: sand who had sunk into practical heathenism Thej- ke}->t no Sabbath, they entered no house of God; bells might have been mute, pulpits silent, and churches shut for them. So far as they cared, or were concerned, the cross, with its blessed burden, might never have stood on Calvary. Just think of us, sitting at ease in Zion, with forty thousand neighbors perishing at our door — ^but one here, and another there, caring for their souls ! Those who alleged this, those who had gone below to sound the well, and came up to report how the water was rising, were treated as alarmists. Th(^ sky was clear, the sea was calm, the ship wasi but slowly sinking, and so — all fears laughed away — the merry music struck up again, and the dance went on upon the deck. But since that period, another party has stept in — one not suspected of fanaticism or a sectarian spirit. The Government instituted a census, and its results have established the ability, and vindi- cated the integrity of those who were the first to sound the alarm. It is now proved, that not here only where between forty and fifty ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 153 thousand go to no churcli — not in Glasgow only, where more than a hundred thousand go to no chnrch — not in London only, where more than ten hundred thousand go to no chui'ch ; but that in all our large towns there are to be found immense, formidable, and growing masses over whom religion has no hold — who have parted from their anchors, and broken loose from all religious profession. Nor is that all. The plague has extended from the towns to the country. Many rural districts, which, some years ago, w^ere the homes of a devout and decent peasantry, are now filled with a mining or manufacturing population, who know no Sabbath, read no Bible, and care neither for Grod nor man. But instead of roaming over either the whole town or country, look again at . that district of this city which we have begun to cultivate. In what state did we find its peo- ple, so far as attendance on divine worship was concerned? Well, upon entering on our work in the Pleasance — certainly, as 1 have already said, not the worst district of 164 Tj3E city: the town — we found more than one-third of its two thousand inhabitants, more than six hun- dred of the whole two thousand people, pass- ing on to the grave as careless of their souls as if tliey had none to care for — ^living without the profession of religion — living without God or hope in the world — living, to all practical intents and purposes, heathens in a Christian land. We, like other congregations of our own church and of other churches which have labored in the same work, have had already fruit of our labors. Let all other congrega- tions, to whatever denomination of Christiana they may belong, engage in a similar enter- prise. Let each select their own manageable field of Christian work. Let us thus embrace the whole city, and cover its nakedness — although like Joseph, it should be robed in a coat of many colors. Let our only rivalry be the holy one of who shall do mostand succeed best in converting the wilderness into an Eden, and causing these deserts to blossom as the rose. Like those allies on Crimean fields who forgot ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 155 their old quarrels, and buried the recollections of the past in oblivion, let us all sit down to- gether before this great fortress. They co- operated for the common good. Rebuking our wretched jealousies, and presenting us with a heroic, I bad almost said a holy ex- ample of generous sympathy and indomitable energy, in tbe teeth of frost, and famine, and pestilence, and war, they clung to the rocks of that stormy shore. With mutual under- standing and arrangements, they threw up their batteries, they pressed on their lines, they manned the trenches, they rushed to the as- sault— mingling the shouts of different nations in the same gallant charge, and the blood of different races in the same battle-field. And if nations, once hostile, there fought and fell together, there bled and died together, wby sbould not different churches come to as com- mon and cordial an understanding. If we make a united, I believe, with God's blessing, we shall make an irresistible assault upon these four formidable strongholds of Sin and Satan. 156 THE CITY: Let what we have done on a small scale in our selected district be done on a large one. We have brought the uneducated within the doors of the school. We have built up a Christian congregation out of a mass of ruins. We have gathered into the house of God many who were as sheep without a shepherd. We have done this by a devoted missionary — aided by Christian men and women who threw their energies into the work, and spent no small portion of their time among the dwellings of the people in household visita- tions. Let that which we have done on a small scale be done on a large one, and the lowest population of our cities may yet be raised, and the worst districts evangelized. This were done if every Christian family would select but one lost family as the ob- ject of their care, saying, Be that our work. It were done, if every convert would seek to make conversions; done, if every man who had himself reached the rock, would stretch out his hand to pull others up. The work before us — the work of raising and christian- ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 157 izing our masses — would be found, I believe, to be perfectly practicable, were it attempted in a systematic way, and on some such plan as this. Let the ministers or representatives of the different denominations within the city — Episcopalian, Baptist, and Independent, United Presbyterian, Free Church, and Estab- lished Church — meet, and form themselves into a real working Evangelical Alliance. Agreeing to regard all old divisions of parishes with an ecclesiastical right over their inhabit- ants as now-a-days a nullity, and so far as these are preventing Christian co-operation, and the salvation of the people, as worse than a nullity, let them map out the dark and desti tute districts of the city — assigning a district. to each congregation. Let every congregation then go to work upon their own part of tbe field, and giving each some 500 souls to care for, you would thus cover "the nakedness of the land." You would everywhere bring life into close contact with death, and cover the whole as the prophet with his own body did the dead body of the child. Every church - 14 158 THE CITY! going family would have to charge itself with the care of one single family, with seeing that the children of that careless, godless household were got to school, and its members were brought out Dn the Lord's day to the church of the district, or their own place of worship, with visiting them in their sickness, and help- ing them over their difficulties, and by aL Christian kindness promoting both their tem- poral and eternal interests. In this way the work were not only practicable, but amid all its difficulties comparatively easy. It would prove a blessing to the families visiting as well as to the families visited. And I am confident that it would bring down the bless- ing of God on itself, and on our country — in a few years presenting a result which would astonish earth and gladden heaven. I have no hope of accomplishing this object if the churches are to be laced up by their old rules, and people are to leave everything to ministers and missionaries. Why should not he that heareth, as well as he that preacheth, say, Come ? W by should not they that are ITS SINS AND SORRO"W&. 159 preached to, preach ? Our Lord gave to the disciples. Yes ; but they gave to the people. And why should not some who now, on Sab- bath-days, enjoy two services in the house of God, content themselves with one, and at the time of the other go forth to give what they have got? The bread would multiply in their hands. People may tell me they are not learned — I reply, that to tell these poor sin- ners of Jesus, whether beneath the roof of a house or the open roof of heaven, needs no learning. Tliey need nothing but the love of Christ, zeal for souls, and the use of theii mother tongue. Possessed of no qualificatiouv^ but these ; endowed with the Spirit, and or- dained of Heaven, see what the first Christians did ! They conquered the world ! See what the first Methodists did ! They changed the face of England. See what the church in Hamburgh did! Twenty years ago, five Christian men met there in a cobbler's shop. They also, when they beheld the city, wept over it. They resolved to form themselves into a church — a missionary church, with Hamburgh 160 THE crnr: and its environs for the field of tlieii labors. "What their particular creed was, to v/hat de- nomination of Protestants they belonged, ] am not careful to inquire. High above the regimental colors of that little band floated the royal banner of the Cross. They fought for the crown of Jesus. They toiled, they watched, they labored for the salvation of souls. One article of their creed, one term of their communion, was this : — That every member of that Christian church should be a working Christian. So, in the afternoons and evenings of the Lord's day, they went forth io work, to gather in the loiterers by the highways and the hedges. Every member ihey gained was more than an accession to their numbers — he was an accession to their power. And with what results w^ere their la bors attended? These should encourage all other congregations and churches " to go and do likewise." That handful of corn is now waving in the golden harvests of many fields. That acorn is now shot up into a mighty oak that nestles the birds of heaven and braves ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 16l the tempest, and throws a broad shadow on the ground. The church which was at first constituted of these five men, who met in an obscure and humble shop, has, in the couise of twenty years, been blessed of God to con- vert many thousand souls, and bring some fifty thousand people under the regular min- istrations of the gospel. See what the Lord has wrought I In that experiment and its sublime results, in the rich effusion of the Spirit on the labors of these humble men and women — every one working in their own sphere, but all at work — who does not hear the voice of Providence saying, as it mingles with the songs of rejoicing an- gels, " Go and do likewise." And should any Dne come to me with the news that such and such an office-bearer, or member of this con- gregation, was preaching in our streets, I would repl}^ with Moses : A young man came running to say, " Eldad and Medad do proph- esy in the camp,'' and Joshua, jealous for Lis master's honor, interposed, saying, "My lord Moses forbid them." How noble his answer I 14* 162 THE city: " Enviest thou for me? Would God tbac all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord did put his Spirit upon them !" Were such moral agencies established ovei all our cities, and wrought with the energy of men who trust in God, and are fired with the love of souls, were the churches to do their part in the matter of religion, and the state to do her part in the m.atter of education, our country might stand till the day of doom. Then it would appear, that although Britain bears no eagle on her banner, yet with her foot upon the '^ Rock of ages," and her undaz- zled eye fixed on the Sun of Righteousness, in this respect she belongs to the eagle tribe, that she can moult her wings and renew her youth. " For what saith the Lord, Hast thou not knov/n? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary ? There is no searching of His under- standing; he giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might, he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 163 weary, and the young men shall utterly fall ; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." But if this is not to be done, and nothing effectual is to be done to meet the evils that afflict our country, what " shall be the end of these things ?" Unless they are met, met in time, and before the constitution sinks and loses all power to rally, the end of them must be the ruin of our land I Our cities, especially our large cities, being in this, as they are in every other country, the great centres of influence, if they increase in igno- rance, irreligion, and immoral-itj^ during the next century as they have done in the past, those who fear the God of heaven and profess the faith of Jesus Christ will find themselves a weak minorit}^ We are just now rapidly moving on to such a dangerous crisis. That is the rock toward which the vessel of the state is drifting. And when that happens, i; 164 THE cirr: needs no augur to tell " what sliall be tlie end of these things." Take as types of their class the two largest cities in England and Scotland. Look at London and Glasgow. He must be blind who sees nothing alarming in the moral aspect of these commercial capitals. There, igno- rance and irreligion are washing away the soil from beneath the lowest courses of the social fabric. Let that continue — let this undermin- ing process go on till a convulsion come, and no power on earth can keep the pyramid from toppling over — burying throne and altar, and all that stands above, in a common ruin. The upper classes of society should know — God grant that the}^ may not learn the lesson when it is too late I — ^that whatever be the distance between them, no elevation separates their in- terests from the lowest people ; that there is a God who reigneth upon earth ; and that, by a decree of Providence, as sure as those that rule the courses of tide or time, those who ne- glect the interests of others shall themselves suffer in the end. When the body of the peo- ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 165 pie go down, they shall not perish alone ; in til em down goes a mighty ship, creating in its descent a tremendous whirlpool to engulph the rank and wealth, the religion and liberties, of our land. We are most concerned for the great body c f the people, because it is in their virtues and piety that the power and per- manence of kingdoms lie. Tbey form the mass of the social fabric; and, although it will stand the shock, or survive the decay which destroys its lofty and more ornamental parts, let it be destroyed, and these are buried in the ruins. When the mass of the people cease to be pervaded with morality and piety (look at France, for instance), by a law as sure as that which, under certain conditions, changes wine into vinegar, the sweetest into the sourest things, liberty passes into licen- tiousness— an intolerable evil, from which to be relieved men submit their necks to the yoke of despotism. There is no choice for nations but the fear of God or the terror of man — the power of the Bible or the point of the bayonet 166 THE city: When men die, corruption commonly be- gins after death ; but when nations die, it always begins before it. And as in that man's gangrened extremities and swollen feet, and slow circulation, I see the heralds of death approaching — in these godless masses, sunk in ignorance, lost to the profession of religion, and even to ihe decent habits of civilized so- ciety, I see the most alarming signs of a nation's danger — unless remedies are promptly applied, the unmistakeable forerunners of a nation's death. Unless early, active, adequate measures are employed to arrest the progress of our social maladies, there remains for this mighty empire no fate but the grave — that grave which has closed over all that have gone before it. AVhere are the Assyrian and Egyp- tian monarchies? Where is the Macedonian empire? Where the world-wide power of Kome ? Egypt lies entombed amid the dust of her catacombs. Assyria is buried beneath the mounds of Nineveh. Rome lives only in the pages of history, survives but in the mem- ory of her greatness and the majestic ruins of ITS SINS AND SORROWS. 1()7 the " Eternal City." Shall our fate resemble theirs ? Shall it go to prove that Providence has extended the same law of mortality to nations that lies on men? That they also should struggle through the dangers of a pre- carious infancy ; grow up into the beauty, and burn with the ardor, of youth ; arrive at the vigor of a perfect manhood ; and then, slowly sinking, pass through the blindness and decay of old age, until they drop into the tomb ? Under God, it depends upon ourselves whether that shall or shall not be our fate. Matters are not so far gone but it may be averted. A great French general, who reached the battlefield at sun-down, found that the troops of his country had been worsted in the fight. Unskilful arrangements had neutral- ized Gallic bravery, and offered the enemy advantages they were not slow to seize. He accosted the unfortunate commander. Having rapidly learned how matters stood, he pulled out his watch, turned bis eye on the sinking sun, and said, '' There's time yet to gain the victory." He rallied the broken ranks. He 168 THE CITY: ITS SINS AND SORROWS. placed himself at their head. And launching ^hem, with the arm of a giant in war, upon the columns of the foe, he plucked the prize from their hands — won the day. There is time yet, also, to save our country. There is no time to lose. To her case perhaps may be applied the words, which we would leave as a solemn warning to every worldly, careless, Christless man, " Behold now is the accepted time ; behold now is the day of salvation." APPENDIX. Yt t in these different kingdoms^ Ac. — P. 56. In Paris, we saw two persons who were drunk, one a soldier, tne other an ouvrier ; we also saw one soldier 'Jrunk in Brussels, and these three were all we saw drunk during a seven weeks' tour spent in various of the kingdoms, and large as well as small towns, of the Con- tinent. We never saw a woman drunk, either during these seven weeks passed last summer on the Continent, nor during five months we spent many years ago in Paris. In none of these Continental towns, save in the Jewish quarter in Frankfort on the Maine, did we see anything like the foulness which in their closes, courts, and alleys, disgrace our large cities, and is enough to degrade their inhabitants. Save in the Canton of the Yalais, a very poor and Popish district of Switzerland, we saw no rags, nor any such foul wretchedness, as is found in the low districts of aU our large towns. We saw poverty sometimes, but it was decent poverty ; and the worst clad children had none of that air of misery and sadness, worn by hundreds at home, who are the unhappy offspring of debauched and brutal parents. Public amusements and social enjoyments of an innocent 1$ 170 APPENDIX, kind are too little encouraged among us ; and here the upper classes of society stand separated by too wide a gulph from the great mass of the people. There peer and peasant, king and subject, rub shoulders with each other in the same public gardens, and the humbler classes behave well because they are treated well. In the charges of the English Judges. — P. 58. Judge Coleridge: "There is scarcely a crime comes before me that is not, directly or indirectly, caused by strong drinks Judge Gurney : " Every crime has its origin, more or less, in drunhennessy Judge Pattison : "If it were not for this drinking, you (the jury) and I would have nothing to do." Judge AJderson : " Drunkenness is the most fertile source of crime ; and if it could be removed, the assizes of the country would be rendered mere nullities." Judge Wight man : "I find, in every calendar that comes before me, one unfailing source, directly or indi- rectly, of most of the crimes that are committed — m- temperance.'^ Judge Williams : "Experience has proved tha-i almost aU crime into which juries have had to inquire, may be traced, in one way or other, to the habit of drunkenness.'' There is a dig in England^ <&c. — P. 58. During the Session of 1852, Mr. Hume, M.P., moved for a return of the number of persons taken into cus- tody for drunkenness and disorderly conduct in Great APPENDIX. 171 Altain and Ireland each year, from 1841 to 1851. From these returns it was found, that while in Liverpool, with a population of 400,000, 18,522 persons, and in Glasgow, with a population of 360,000, 14,870 persons were taken into custody by the police for the above offence ; Man- chester, with a population of 316,000, presented only 787 cases. It must be borne in mind, that while in Scotland the instructions of the police are most stringent, in Manchester no notice is taken of drunkenness unless in case of assault or breach of the peace, and not always then. Convinced from their own experience that so great a discrepancy as these returns exhibit arose from these and other circumstances, rather than from a real prevalence of sobriety among the population of our city, the committee of the Manchester and Salford Temper- ance Society determined to submit the question of the drinking habits of the people, at least so far as Sunday it concerned, to a rigid investigation. They resolved tc watch all the houses in which intoxicating drinks are usually sold, and to keep an exact record of the number of visits paid to each during a certain time. It would be impossible to enumerate each separate district ; a few, therefore, must suffice : — St. Michael's Ward. — Inhabited principally by the operative class; a great portion by thieves, beggars, and prostitutes. Angel Street, Dych Street, Charter Street, Ludgate Hill, and adjoining streets, at two o'clock, on Sunday, May 28th, were crowded with men, women, and children, in rags and filth, some drinking .n the streets^ others gambling ; in fact this district can only be described as a very liell upon earth. Most of the men taking thig ward had to be changed every half 172 APPENDIX, aour, or hour- some were driven off by mobs, and others stoned. Number of houses taken, 162; visits, 13,738 men, 7862 women, 2905 children ; total, 24,505, being 43 more than an average of 151. District bounded by Great Jackson Street, Stretford Road, and Chester Road. — Several fights were reported, at which no police appeared ; also one house filled with pigeon flyera, who were flying their birds the whole afternoon and evening from the front of the house; another house filled with dog-fighters, with their dogs, during the evening. There were one dog-fight, and two fights among the men frequenting the house, at none of which any policemen interfered. Number of houses, 96; visits, 6331 men, 4116 women, 1219 children; total, 11,666, being an average of 127 to a house. Deansgate and Chester Road, including a beer-house on Victoria Bridge. — Swan Inn : 996 men, 590 women, 146 children ; total, 1732. No. 274 : 777 men, 676 wo- men, 65 children; total, 1518. Farmers' Arms: 591 men, 582 women, 28 children ; total, 1281. Crown Inn : 671 men, 360 women, 69 children; total, 1100. The Parsonage Inn, in the Parsonage : 858 men, 81 women, 6 children ; total, 945. The person watching tliis house went in at one o'clock, being half an hour after it was opened, and counted 80 persons sat drinking. Trafford Arms, Victoria Bridge, a singing room : 549 men, 151 women, 420 }''ouths; total 1120; visitors consist prin- cipally of young people. Ten other houses, with from 400 to 800 each. Total number of houses in Deansgate and Chestei Road, 58; visited by 12,387 men, 6342 women, 1314 children; total, 19,845, being an average of 347 4 to a house. APPENDIX. 178 The following is a general summary. It will be seen that while the proceedings of the committee extended over ten Sundays, yet, as no house was taken twice, a fair average of the attendance at each has been arrived at. The Committee are aware of no particular cause which could operate to render the results of one Sun- day's census different from another ; and it would have rendered observation much more difficult had not due caution and secresy been observed. The committee have every reason to believe in the perfect accuracy of the fiofures. General Summary of Visits during Legal Hours. Date. Houses. Men. Women'Child'n.l Total. | 1 April 2 2 936 1 278 429 1,643 " 9 8 2,168 [ 902 51 3,116 « 16 36 9,789 I 5,277 851 15,917 " 23 57 7,056 3,981 692 11,729 " 30 95 7,078 6,378 935 14,891 May 7 100 ^ ' 6,699 4,088 1,109 11,896 " 14 234 18,2.39 9,566 2,559 80,864 " 21 329 27,684 16,322 6,201 50,207 " ?8 354 25,602 16,299 6,528 48,429 Juno 4 loUl. 1 222 14,878 8,518 4,280 27,626 1,437 120,124 71,609 23,585 215,818 Vaults. Public house. Beer- Tola'. Aver'ge i 114 114 29,568 17,926 4,147 51,641 453 1 127 ... 127 14,880 7,947 2,835 25,662 202 746 -^46 51,474 27,512 11,544 90.530 121 Mixed. 37 lii2 281 4tO 24,202 17,726 5,059 47,485 I06f Tutal. 151 259 1,027 1,437 120,124 71,609 23,585 215,318 149i Including 5-i policemen on duty, who remained from five minutes to half aa hour. Twenty public housea were found closea. In closing this b.iwf .\^port of their labors, the com- 15* 174 APPENDIX. tiiittee beg to express their thanks to the various super- intendents and teachers of Sunday-schools, and also to the several members of branch committees, vi'ho assisted in taking these statistics. The committee would earnest- ly direct the attention of every philanthropist to the fearful state of demoralization thus laid open ; they would especially draw attention to the vast number of beer- houses in the city, 1572 ; to the Hass of persons keep- ing, as to those who visit, these Dens. It is a fearful fact that many of them are attended, and mainly sup- ported, by mere youths of from 14 to 17 years of age. With agencies for evil so potent and subtle — with temptations so numerous and so widely spread — and. above all, with a traffic in debauchery and crime pro- tected and encouraged by law — what hope for the triumph of pure rehgion and virtue among our debased and sensual population ? Does not the sin of Britain cry aloud for judgment ? How long will Christians and philanthropists hesitate ? How long shall paltry custom shield from infamy and disgrace those who profit by this sin ? Let one earnest, heartfelt cry be sent forth, which, heard amid the echo of political and party strife, shall tell our legislators that the people of England will no longer groan under this oppressive burden of death ; that they will labor and pray until the accursed traffic be swept from their midst forever ! Cause to thank God for that Act of Parliament, — P. QQ. Acts of Parliament cannot make men sober, other- wise than by removing the temptations which foster habits of LQ temperance. Forbes Mackenzie's Act, which APPENDIX. 175 no one can wonder at those attacking who make their fortunes out of the vices of the people, has been attacked by others of whom better things might have been ex- pected. The satisfactory accounts of its working which came from all parts of the country, should long ago have silenced its opponents ; but they contrived, with a courage worthy of a better cause, to fight " upon their stumps," and continued to insist that this has proved a complete failure. It will rejoice every true friend of the people, and right-hearted Christian man, to find by the following report of Mr. Linton how completely that Act has succeeded. The beneficial effects of it are very distinctly brought out in the following table. By that Act, which came into operation in 1854, no intoxicating liquors can be sold for consumption on the premises, save to " honajide" travellers, before eight o'clock in the morning, and not at all between eleven o'clock on Saturday night and eight o'clock on Monday morning. This Act, which shuts up all drinking shops on the Lord's day, and also all inns, save to " bona fide'' travellers, unfortunately appUes only to Scotland. Nttmbeb on Sundays. MALES. FEMALES. BOTH SEXES. 1 m Total. III Total. III TotaU S«-r s i f^ '6^--d s^ b 1852 491 863 8.54 238 260 498 729 628 1,352 ia53 427 8R4 811 214 280 494 641 QM: 1,8(15 1854 2s8 260 543 172 163 885 455 428 878 ■■ 1855 234 194 428 165 185 840 889 879 768 1856 275 165 440 161 168 329 486 838 769 176 AI»PEND1X. It has been alleged by the opponents of this Act (for, strange to say, it has had opponents), that the forced sobriety of the Sabbath-day only led to a greater excess in drinking on the Saturday or Monday. The unfound- ed nature of that statement is demonstrated by the fol- lowing table : — NuMBEE ON Saturdays, Sundats, and Mondays. 1 185-2. 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856. ' Saturdays.... 1 Sundays Mondays 1933 1352 1169 1879 1S53 1305 878 1236 1164 1783 768 1038 1744 769 852 Total 4454 4420 1 8895 8589 8365 It has been alleged that not less than sixty millions of money. — P. 74. That this statement is not an exaggeration, and that it is not in fact 30, but the enormous sum of 60 milliona sterling, is spent year by year in Great Britain and Ire- land on intoxicating liquors, is proved by the following statistics. They are extracted from the Journal ot the Statistical Society of London, which originally appe^-red in a paper read by G. K. Porter, Esq., F.R.S., before tha British Association. The quantity of spirits of home production : Paid by the consumers for British and Irish spirits consumed within the kingdom in 1849, £17,381,641 Kum, ditto 3.428,565 Brandy, ditto, 3,2S1,25« Beer of all kinds, exclusive of that brewed in private fair lies, 25,383,165 £49.474,628 APPENDIX. 177 Add to this sum the value of all the beer brewed in private houses, and also the money paid by the con- Bumers for 5,582,385 gallons of foreign wine used in the United Kingdom, and there can be no doubt that at least 60 millions of money are annually spent by the people on what is, at the best a luxury, in most cases a pernicious, in all cases a dangerous, and in many cases a fatal indulgence. It has been stated that 60,000 lives are annually lost.—V. '76. In connection with this, I may state that the number of infant lives destroyed, through the neglect and starv- ation which they suffer in consequence of the drunken habits of their parents, it is impossible to calculate, but it must be frightful and enormous. Nothing struck us more, when we were accustomed to visit the families of the wretched classes, than to find how large a proportion of the children were cut off in early age ; nor, when W6i saw the misery and crime which hfe would have had iw store for them, could we regret to learn that they were safe in the churchyard. The destruction of human life, directly caused by drunkenness, is the subject of a paper by F. Gr. P. Nel- son, Esq., F.L.S., a distinguished actuary, read before the Statistical Society of Sweden. He shows that between the ages of 21 and 30 years, the mortality among drunkards is upwards of five times that of the general community. He states that if there be anything in the usages of society calculated to de- stroy life, the nost powerful is certainly the inordinate 178 APPENDIX. use of strong drink. He produces tables whicl: prove that the mortality among this class is frightfully high, and unequalled by the result of any other series of ob- servations made in any class of the population of this country ; and adds — " Sanitary agitators have frequent- ly excited alarm about the wholesale havoc in human life going on in the badly-conditioned districts of some of our large cities ; but no collection of facts ever brought under attention has shown so appalling a waste of life as exhibited in the above results." Referring to tables founded on a broad basis, and wrought out with the nicest accuracy, he states : — " It will thus be seen, that an intemperate person, of age 20, has an equal chance of hving fifteen years, while a per- son of the general population of the country, at the same age, has an equal chance of living 44 years longer. Again, at age 30, the intemperate person has an equal chance of living 13 years, and the other 36 years. Also, at age 40, the chance of the one is 1 1 years, and of the other 28 years." The effect of intemperance upon different classes of the people, as given in his tables, is full of warning, and curious, although such as we might expect. The average duration of life, after the commencement of in- temperate habits, is — Among mechanics, laborers, and working men, ... IS yeara. " traders, dealers, and merchants, IT " " professional men, and gentlemen, 15 " " females, 14 " Let all the kingdom listen to the weighty words of its Prime Minister. Lord Palraerston, in addressing tlie laborers, at the annual meeting of the Laborers' En- APPENDIX. 179 couragement Society, said : — " It is the duty of all parenta to see that their children are well and properly educated —that they are early instructed, not merely in book learning, in reading and writing, and acquirements of that kind, but instructed in the precepts which indicate the difference between right and wrong, and that they are taught the principles of religion, and their duty to- wards God and man. Now, the way in which that can be done, is by the father and mother building up their household upon that which is the foundation of all excel- lence in social life — I mean a happy home (applause). Now, no home can be happy if the husband be not a kind and affectionate husband, and a good father to his children. Bearing this in mind, he must avoid two great rocks on which too many men in the humbler rank? make shipwreck — the tobacco shop and the beer shop. The first ruins his health, and leads to all kinds of disease. If he were a man living on a desert island, and isolated from society, this might be a matter of comparatively httle importance, and he might ruin his constitution just as he pleased ; but the laboring classes must remember that their health and strength are the support of theii famihes, and if they ruin the one, and recklessly waste the other, they not only injure themselves, but do irre- parable damage to those who are depending upon them. So much for the use of tobacco, which many, to their detriment, indulge in. But the beer shop and public bouse go further, because the habits there contracted not only lead to the degradation of the individual and the Impoverishment of his family, but they lead to offences and crimes which tend to place the man in the condition of a felon and a convict. No man who indulges in 180 APPENDIX. drink can fail to feel degraded when he recovers from his intoxication, and that sense of degradation leads him again to drown his cares in renewed intoxication, and from step to step he falls into the lowest condition that human nature can be degraded to." / charge it with the murder of innumerable souls. — P. 105. Many illustrations of this charge suggest themselves. Let us select, for example, the case of Sabbath school scholars. Look at the fatal influence which drink has been found to exert in those connected with Sabbath schools, and to what a lamentable and frightful extent it has neutralized all their blessed influences. In a letter which Mr. Logan addressed to the editor of the British Banner^ he states : — " I have been in the habit of visit- ing prisons, and conversing with criminals almost weekly, for upwards of twelve years. My observations extend to almost every large prison in the United Kingdom. For the last eight years I have been trying to ascertain what proportion of our prison population have been con- nected with Sunday schools. When collecting informa- tion from prisoners, it has ever been a general rule with me to prevent them, as much as possible, from becoming acquainted with the main object of the visit I record a few facts which refer to different parts of the country. I visited 78 of th6 88 prisoners who were tried at the Glasgow assizes, in September, 1848. Seven of these could neither read nor write: of the remaining 71 not less than 38 males and 24 females — total, 62 — had been connected with Sabbath schools. A number of both APPENDIX. 181 sexes had been in attendance at Sunday sclools for three, four, five, six, seven, nine, and even ten years. To prevent anything like deception on this point, I cross-questioned them as to the locality of the schools, the names of the teachers, etc. I likewise spent several days in calling on a number of the parents and relatives, in difierent parts of the city, and the replies given by these parties to my inquiries fully corroborated the statements of the convicts themselves. Fifty-nine of the sixty-two criminals admitted that drinking and public-house com- pany had not only been the chief cause of their leaving the Sunday school, but of violating the laws of their country. The number of prisoners who were tried at the Glasgow assizes in March, 1849, was 27 ; I visited 25 of them: 20 of the 23 who could read were old Sunday scholars, and 19 acknowledged that they had been injured by strong drink. " The Governor of the Boys' House of Refuge, Glas- gow, informs me, in a note of the 22d March, 1849, that of the 115 juvenile dehnquents, 7^ had been connected with Sabbath schools. He also states, that 57 of the children's fathers, and 47 mothers— total, 104— were in- temperate ; and 41 of the youths had been in the habit of drinking themselves. The matron of the Females' House of Refuge states, November, 28, 1848, that of the 126 inmates, including 50 unfortunate women, 105 had been connected with Sabbath schools! The matron adds, that 'intemperance is a most fruitful source of juvenile delinquency, and also of crime and profligacy in those of riper years.' "It is scarcely necessary to remark, that these appal- ling facts are not adduced for the purpose of imder- 16 182 APPENDIX. valuing the benevolent efforts of Sunday school teachers. On the contrary, I feel deeply interested in their disin- terested labors, and have been personally identified with them for more than twenty years. My great object is to convince the friends of Sunday schools, that the accursed drinking usages of the present day are annually robbing us of thousands of young people who were once our most hopeful scholars." [Pages might be filled with evidence to the same effect, but let the following statements by others suffice] : — The master of a large day school in the vicinity of London, stated, a few years ago, that on examining a roll con- taining the names of one hundred pupils, he ascertained upon inquiry that ninety-one of them had become drunk- ards. At Lau7icesion, a similar investigation took place in a well-conducted Sabbath school, and out of one hun- dred boys, as their names stood on the register, 26 had left the neighborhood and were unknown, but of the re- maining seventy-four, forty had been overcome by drunk- enness ! — Another says : " Of sixty scholars in a Sab- bath school, thirty were found to have been ruined through drink."— Another, the Eev. W. Wight, B. A., says : " Out of a hst of eight Sabbath school Teachers, ieven were found to have been ruined through drink 1" Another, a minister at Ipswich, says : " Out of fifteen young men professing piety and Teachers in the Sab- bath school, nine were ruined through drink 1" — An- other, a warm friend of Sabbath schools, stated that, " In a town in Lancashire, no fewer than four ' unfortu- nate females' were seen together in the street, every one of whom had been once a Teacher in a Sabbath school 1" " A few montlis ago a member of committee visited APPENDIX. 183 utie of the singing-saloons in Rochdale, and on a Saturday evening, about eleven o'clock, he observed about sixteen boys and girls, seated at a table in front of the stage ; several of the lads had long pipes, each with a glass or jug containing intoxicating Uquor, and no less than four- teen of the number were members of Bible classes in our different Sunday schools. There they sat, hstening to the most obscene songs, witnessing scenes of the most immoral kind, and spending the interval in swallowing liquid fire." It is added : ■' These sinks of iniquity are tlironged with old Sunday scholars, especially on Sabbath evenings, and not unfrequently until twelve o'clock." Still further it is said: "The appalling results of the drinking system are not wholly confined to the children in our schools ; many a promising teacher has fallen a victim." The Rev. James Sherman, minister of the Surrey Chapel, said :— " The question has been asked, what be- comes 'of the senior scholars of these schools ? In the schools belonging to my own church the number of scholars is 3000, with 400 gratuitous teachers; but I am bound to say that few of those children become mem- bers of the church after leaving the schools. Where do they go ? Many of them would be found, as soon as they arrived at the age of fifteen or sixteen, to become apprentices; and, by the pernicious system which pre- vailed among the working classes so situate, they grew up, many of them to be drunkards, and to be a disgrace to 'themselves and the neighborhood. A teacher of a class which was called the vestry-class, had collected the statistics in respert to that class, consisting o^ forty -six. He was induced to examme what were their habits in 184 APPENDIX. regard to Temperance during the preceding seven years, and the result was — drunkards, thirteen ; occasional drunkards, nine ; steady characters, thirteen ; unknown, three," &c. These are dreadful facts. They make a strong appeal to the conscience of every Christian man. They loudly call on us to do something, to do everything within our power by precept and by example, by labors and by sacrifices to put an end to an evil that in regard to thou- sands is turning the blessed gospel, churches, and Sab- bath schools, to nought. Almost all the crime. — P. 106. The connection between crime and drunkenness ia strikingly illustrated by the following table, which ia • extracted from Superintendent Linton's " Returns." It appears from this table, that nearly one half of the crimes committed, 40 per cent, of them, were committed by parties when under the influence of intoxication. Add to this percentage the number of crimes committed by those whom drink has brought to poverty — to want; whom drink has driven to desperation ; whom drink has deprived of all self-respect, and all those other moral in- fluences that keep men and women from crime; and include in the reckoning the number of crimes commit- ted by those who have been reared in ignorance, sin, and misery, solely and entirely in consequence of the de- praved and dissipated habits of their parents, and no man can doubt that drink, through its direct or indirect effects, is the pregnant cause of an overwhelming pro- portion of the crimes of our country. APPENDIX. 185 l?OTIl»»«K INB PkRCKNTAQE OF PERSONS APPRKH«NDED FOB CRIMES Ok Q>.'r,iSOm, WUO WERE DRUNK WHEN TUEY COMMITTW) TUEM. MALES. 1 FEMALES. 1 BOTH SEXES. ^ l!l Id 1 i!l h 1 1 p s s h < *tl 1^ 1 1 i < HI 1 < Hi 1852 4,864 ! 1,774 86 1 4,496 1 1,626 '\ 36 9,360 ! 3,400 37 1853 4,620 12,914 48 , 4,918 1,989 ; 40 9,538 14,008 41 . 1854 3,892 1,802 46 4,076 (1,764 43 7,968 3,566 44 1855 3,-t4S 1,590 46 8,711 1,491 ; 40 7,159 1 3,081 43 1856 8,240 1,374 42 3,719 1,392 37 6,959 1 2,766 39 How is my assertion corroborated by tlie following statements ? They are a voice from the prison. It givea forth no uncertain sound. The Governor of York Castle (Jno. Noble, Esq.): *^ Nineteen out of every twenty, who come under my care, come, directly or indirectly, through drinking''' The Rev. John Beid, Chaplain to the Prisons of Glas- gow : " You are desirous to know the cause of crimt in these quarters. One short word embraces the burden of the whole matter — Drink! Drink! Of at least twenty thousand prisoners, including juveniles, with whom I have conversed in private during the last four years, I am certain that the professedly teetotal portion of them have been under the five hundredth part of the whole." James Backhouse, Esq. (the celebrated traveller in Africa) : " The time of my sojourn in the Australian coU onies was from the beginning of 1832 to 1838, and much of this time was occupied in visiting the prisoner popu- lation, consisting of convicts from Great Britain and Ireland. In conversing with viany thousands of these 16* 180 APPENDIX. I was surprised to find the large proportion that had fallen into crimes resulting from intemperance, and who referred to the fines and footings of British work-shops as i\\e\.v first step in this evil course." Twelfth Report of the Inspectors of Prisons : " On the question being put to a number of prisoners in Edin- burgh gaol, under twenty years of age — ' What do you assign as the first cause of your falhng into error?' ' Drink' is almost the invariable answer." Kev. George Ilishp, Chaplain to prison oi' Edinburgh : " I am unable to mark out, with arithmetical precision, the place among the causes of crime which must be assigned to this habit (intemperance) ; but I have no hesitation in expressing the opinion that it is one of the most active, and, at present, the most prevalent of second- ary causes." Rev. E. Meeres, Chaplain of Rochester gaol : " I have no hesitation in saying that a very large proportion, pos- sibly nineteen out of every twenty, are imprisoned through the effects of drunkenness.'' Rev. W. Brown, General Prison, Perth : " Our prison- ers in general are, directly or indirectly, the victims of intemperance.'' Rev. Geo. M'Lear, Chaplain, Bedford gaol : " My ex- perience of eighteen years justifies the conclusion that ninety-nine out of every hundred owe their imprison- ment, directly or indirectly, to intemperance." — "New prisons and new regulations will, humanly speaking, oe of little benefit, so long as intemperance prevails to the extent it now does." APPENDIX. 187 The legislature may render essential service. — P. 107. The combined influence of legislative enactments, of the reduction of public houses, of total abstinence pnu- ciples, and of that elevation of public feeling and m(3r- als, vrhich is mainly to be attributed to the attention which temperance si~>cieties have turned to the subject of drunkenness, and to the Ught which they have thrown upon the extent and evils of this vice, appears m the improved habits of the people, as very strikingly brought out in the following tables. They demonstrate that sobriety is on the increase, and drunkenness on the wane. These tables are extracted from '' Returns as to Crimes, Offences, and Contraventions, and to cases of Drunkenness," prepared for the Magistrates and Council by Mr. Linton, Superintendent of Police. Number of Persons fouxd Drunk in the Streets, and kept in THE Police Office and Station- Houses till thet were Sober, AND Number who were Drunk when apprehended for Crimss AND Offences. Total Number taken Charge ofby the Police. MALES. FEMALES. BOTH SEXES. 1 %U m m -.r^ 112 2 = S Total. ite III io..., i9f ^%% Total. \ 5 °=-.= ■'%. 1 s ==- ' fa '-1 fei ■'^^ 1852 3,903 1,774 5,677 2,46 1 1 1,626 4,090 6.367 13,400 9,767 1853 3,4(50 2.014 5.474 2.267 '1,989 4.256 5,727 14.003 9,730 1*54 3.126 1.S02 4,92S 2,057 ,1,764 3,s21 5,1S3 i 3,566 1 8,749 1855 2,993 1.590 4,583 '2,021 1,491 13,512 5,014 '3,081 8,095 j 1856 2,847 1,374 4,221 12,123 1,392 1 3,515 4,970 1 2,766 7,786 It were much to be de?ired that this country, which in the last and ib the beginning of the preser^t century 188 APPENDIX. devoted more than twenty years, all its energies, and many hundred millions of money to wars that have not prevented a Bonaparte from occupying the throne of France, and which I may say devoted other twenty years to fighting the battles of political reform, would now (Providence permitting) devote at least twenty years, and all the millions that might be needed for such a purpose, to the grand object of social reforms — such as sanitary improvements, the universal education of the people, promotion of temperance, and, through many other means, the comforts and elevation of the working classes, and the elevation especially of the sunken classes of society. In reference to the great social evil of intemperance, a beginning has been made — something has been done — but much yet remains to be done, much — and that the better part also — which the legislators cannot do. Our main hope lies in raising the tone of public feehng and opinion, and that by means of the intellectual, moral, and religious elevation of the people. We would, how- ever, venture to suggest, for the consideration of our legislators, the following measures. They would do much to remove temptation out of the way of the peo- ple, and check the growth and progress of intemper- ance : — 1. Until public-houses, opened for the mere purpose of drinking, are declared illegal, because carrying on a traffic pernicious to the interests of the community, a law should be passed, requiring these to be closed at an early hour in the evening, as they are now by law kept shut to a late hour in the morning. The keeping of them shut till eight in the morning has preserved many a poor APPENDIX. 189 man froir temptation when on the road to his work— the closing of them at six o'clock at night would do still more good, by preserving many a working man from temptation when his day's work was over. They should be made to resemble the ash-tree, which is the last to open up its leaves, and one of the first to close them. 2. All places opened for the mere purpose of drinking intoxicating liquors should be declared illegal, as in most cases the ruin of the poor and a curse to the community. If some will drink, they have wife and children, broth- ers and sisters, at home, to prevent thek drinking to ex- cess, or becoming slaves to the habit. The interest of the dram-seller, on the other hand, lies in inducing them to become frequent and regular customers of his shop. The more they drink, and the deeper they drink, the worse for their families, but the better for him. 3. The law should regard every man or woman, who can be proved before a jury or any other proper author- ity, to' be in habit and repute a drunkard, as a lunatic, and deal with them accordingly. The prospect of a shaven head, a strait jacket (if needful), the high walls of an asylum, and the society of the insane, would strike men with salutary terror. Months of sobriety would, in many instances, so restore the brain and body to health, that the person would acquire the power of resisting temptation, and come out to drink no more — the slave would acquire freedom in the house of bondage. That should be done according to law which is done without law; for it is well known that, within the House of Refoge here, and in other places elsewhere, hundreds of poor drunkards are shut up. Some go to be cured by entire removal fron -emptation, some consent to go dur- 190 APPENDIX. ing a fit of temporary penitence, when under u.e remorse of delirium tremens; but, however they go, fortunately for their famiUes, society, and themselves, they find it easier to get in than get out^ I have known many pa- rents disgraced and tormented by a drunken son, many wives maltreated by drunken husbands, whose cruelty they had not only to bear, but whom their industry had to support, and not a few husbands whose life was em- bittered, and whose property was wasted, and whose children were neglected and ruined, through the dissi- pated habits of the mother of the house. To all these, what a relief would such a law as I suggest bring ? J know a man in a respectable position in this town, who, to prevent his wife selhng his silver spoons and pawning his clothes and furniture, made her a regular allowance of two bottles of whisky per day — and she drank them. In all such cases the law ought to give reUef in justice to a good as against an evil doer. It is strange to seo how society stands by and allows so many to waste their life, their wages, their substance on drink, ^nd thereby throw the burden of maintaining their families on the sober and industrious part of the community. Virtue with us is taxed to support vice. 4. As the drunkard is held responsible for all that he does in a state oC drunkenness, the law should declare that the keeper oi" the drinkmg-shop within which he got drunk shall share in his responsibility. No man can have a right, for the sake of money, to convert another man into a madman, and, having turned him out on so- ciety, to say, of whatever ofFen(ie in his madness he commits, " my hands are clean." 5, The drunkard who deprives himself of reason, and APPENDIX. 191 thereby make3 himself capable of committing any crime should, in all cases, be regarded as a subject of punish- ment ; and the keeper of the drinking-shop, who sup- plied him, should be punished as equally guilty with himself — in many instances as more so. 6. Our legislators should contrive some means at law whereby those who create the poverty of the country should be made upon their own shoulders to carry the burden of it. For illustration's sake, take this case :— - I knew a man who left a public-house drunk on a Sat- urday night, and on Sabbath morning was found smashed, stiff and dead, at the foot of a crag, by the side of which his path homewards lay. The burden of supporting that man's family ought to have been laid, not upon the public, but upon the publican; and the principles of such a law should be carried out to its fullest possible extent. Some plead for better lodyings and sanitary measures. — P. 108. The urgent necessity of these in Edinburgh is power- fully brought out in a letter addressed to the Lord Provost and Magistrates, by Henry Johnston, Esq., H.E.I.C.S., and in a pamphlet which that gentleman has published on the state of our closes and by-streets. He exposes to those whc never turn a foot in the way of these abodes of foul wretchedness and misery a state of mat- ters ruinous to the public health, pernicious to public, morals, and a disgrace to our capital and its inhabitants. Dr. G-eorge Bell published some years ago an account of the houses and iihabitants of Blackfriars' Wynd 192 APPENDIX. which presents a most doleful view Df the sin. nisery wretchedness, and foulness of some parts of our city. But the necessity of sanitary measures could not be better brought out than by the following extracts from a report given last summer by Dr. Letheby, to the City Commissioners of Sowers for London : " I have also been at much pains during the last three months to ascertain the precise conditions of the dwell- ings, the habits, and the diseases of the poor. In this way, 2208 rooms have been most circumstantially in- spected, and the general result is, that nearly all of them are filthy, or over-crowded, or imperfectly drained, or badly ventilated, or out of repair. In 1989 of these rooms, all, in fact, that are at present inhabited, there are 5791 inmates, belonging to 1576 famihes; and to say nothing of the too frequent occurrence of what may be regarded as a necessitous over-crowding, where the husband, the wife, and young family of four or five children are cramped into a miserably small and ill- conditioned room, there are numerous instances where adults of both sexes, belonging to difierent famOies, are lodged in the same room, regardless of all the common decencies of life, and where from three to five adults, men and women, besides a train or two ot children, art accustomed to herd together like brute beasts or sav- ages ; and where every human instinct of propriety or decency are smothered. Like my predecessor, I havo seen grown persons of both sexes sleeping in common with their parents, brothers, and sisters, and cousins, anc even the casual acquaintance of a day's tramp occupy ing the same bed of filthy rags or straw ; a womaji suf- fering in travail, in the midst of male's and females of APPENDIX 193 different families that tenant the same rv jni ; where birth and death go hand in hand ; where the child but newly bora, the patient cast down with fever, and the corpse waiting for interment, have no separation from eacn other, or Irom the rest of the inmates. Of the many cases to which I have alluded, there are some that have commanded my attention by reason of their unusual depravity — cases in which from three to foui adults of both sexes, %vith many children, were lodging in the same room, and often sleeping in the same bed. I have note of three or four localities where 48 men, 75 women, and 59 children are Uving in 34 rooms. In one room there are 2 men, 3 women, and 5 children ; and in another 1 man, 4 women, and 2 children ; and when about a fortnight since, I visited the back room on the ground floor of No. 5, I found it occupied by 1 man, 2 women, and 2 cliildren ; and in it was the dead body of a poor girl, who had died in childbirth a few days be- fore. The body was stretched out on the bare floor, without shroud or cofiBn. There it lay in the midst of the Uving, and we may well ask how it can be other- wise than that the human heart should be deadened to all the gentler feelings of our nature, when such sights as these are of common occurrence. "So close and unwholesome is the atmosphere of some of the rooms, that I have endeavored to ascertain, by chemical means, whether it does not contain some peculiar product of decomposition, that gives to it its foul odor and its rare powers of engendering disease. I find that it is not only deficient in the due proportion of oxygen, but it contains three times the usual amount of carbonic acid, besides a quantity of aqueous vapor 17 194 APPENDIX. charged with alkaUne matter that stinks abominably This is, doubtless^ the product of putrefaction and of the v^arious foetid and stagnant exhalations that pollute the air of the place. In niany of my former reports, and in those of my predecessor, your attention has been drawn to this pestilential source of disease, and to the conse- quence of heaping human beings into such contracted locaUties ; and I again revert to it because of its great importance, not merely that it perpetuates fever and the allied disorders, but because there stalks side by side with this pestilence a yet deadlier presence, blighting the moral existence of a rising population, rendering their hearts hopeless, their acts ruffianly and incestuous, and scattering, while society averts her eye, the retribu- tive seeds of increase for crime, turbulence, and pauper, ism." All who are familiar with the homes of the poorer and the haunts of the wicked and lapsed classes, will be reminded by this report of scenes which they themselves have witnessed in our large cities. Before the Statistical Society at Liverpool, in Septem- ber, 1837, Mr. Langton read a paper on the inhabited courts and cellars in Liverpool. The courts were 2271, and the cellars 7493 ; dark, damp, confined, and tenanted by nea-ly 30,000 souls. In 1838, Mr. James Hey wood read a paper before the Statistical Society of London, giving an account of a house-to-house visitation, of 176 families in Manchester. 165 houses contained many cellars, and there w^ere 11 separate cellars. In 1847 a committee of the Statistical Society of Lon- don inspected thf dwellings, room by room, and condi- APPENDIX. 196 don of the inhabitants, of Church Lane, St Giles, Londoa The population examined was 463, the number of fami- lies 100, and the number of bedsteads among them 90. There was an average, therefore, of above 5 persons to 1 bed ; and many rooms were inliabited by as many as 22 souls. They report that " in these wretched dwellings all ages and both sexes, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, grown-up brothers and sisters, stranger adult males and females, and swarms of children, the sick, the dying, and the dead, are herded together with a proxim- ity and mutual pressure which brutes would resist ; where it is physically impossible to preserve the ordinary decen- cies of life ; where all sense of propriety and self-respect must be lost, to be replaced only by a recklessness of demeanor which necessarily results from vitiated minds , and yet with many of the young, brought up in such hot-beds of mental pestilence, the hopeless, but benevo- lent attempt is making to implant, by means of general education, the seeds of religion, virtue, truth, order, in- dustry, and cleanhness ; but which seeds, to fructify ad- vantageously, need, it is to be feared, a soil far less rank than can be found in these wretched abodes. Tender minds, once vitiated, present almost insuperable difficul- t'es to reformation; bad habits and depraved feelings gather with the growth, and strengthen with the strength." 1 a what large town in the kingdom are not many of the poorer classes of the people hving in circumstances whiv h outrage all decency, destroy every moral feeling, and, of necessity, lead to debasement, dissipation, and crime .* 196 APPENDIX. The principle of temperance^ as I hold it. — P. 118. For a luminous and powerful exposition of the prin- ciple of temperance, as held by the writer of these ser- mons, he would refer the reader to a lecture delivered i^ London, by Professor James MiUer of this city, and en titled "Abstinence, its Place, and Power." We do nothing to instruct them, So. We first con- demn them to crime, and then condemn them tt punishment. — P. 13*7. The following statistics, like aU others of the same de- scription, plainly show how intimately crime is connected with ignorance, and what a total want of education ex- ists amongst the lowest class, which furnish by far the larger number of the criminals of our country. Extract from the Criminal Statistics and Returns of the Manchester Police, The following is a table of the age of the persons taken into custody, with the degree of instruction, for t>ie nine months ending 30th September, 1856 : — • No. Under 10 years of age. 10 vears and under 15. 15 years and under 20. Above 20 years of age. 44T0 10 418 963 8079 j APPENDIX. 197 Deoreb op Instruction of these 4470. Neither able to read or write. Read only, or read and write imperfectly. Read and write well. Superior instruction. 1743 2623 103 1 Per Centage. Total. Of the uneduoated. Of the imperfectly educated. Of the well and superior educated. 4470 38-99 5S-68 2-32 In regard to by far the largest proportion of those entered in the column of the imperfectly educated, so far as all practical purposes and the benefits of education are concerned, they might with propriety be entered under the head of not educated at all ; for it has always been found that those who could not read but with dif- ficulty did not read at all, and were as completely shut out from such means of improvement as books afibrded as those who do not know the letters. Inhere are thousands^ and tens of thousands^ and hundreds of thousands^ of the children of this land, who are growing up strangers to the bene- fits and blessings of education^ Ignorance is their sole, sad inheritance. They are punished for it^ impoverished for it, imprisoned for it, banished for it, and hanged for it. — P. 139. For full proof of this statement, we refer to the Gov- ernment census on education. 198 APPENDIX. Tlie low state of education in Birmingham, where in- fant labor .8 n.munerative, and where thousands of poor children are found at work who ought to be at school, is strikingly brought out by the fact that fourteen months is the full average time which the working classes of Birmingham spend at school. In regard to Glasgow, we have been told that Mr. Strang, the great statist of Glasgow, calculates that there are from 6000 to 7000 children in that city, between 5 and 10 years of age, who are not attending any school. Captain Smart, the very intelligent superintendent of police in that city, reckons that the number of these children will exceed 10,000. A remarkably able, and intelligent gentleman, who has given much attention to philanthropic subjects, writes me in reference to Glas- gow : — " I have had occasion to observe, since the Ecgis- tration Act came into operation, that wliile bastardy is common among mill-workers, the inability to write is equally common. The number of uneducated adults is very great. It is of great importance to observe that the schools are unequally distributed, I find that in twelve districts, containing 12,194 habitually non-churx3h- Qoing families, there are no schools ; and these districts include streets teeming with ' ragged boys.' " Now, these figures, which I believe are correct, square with others upon which I place more reliance. The Tron parish, which may be regarded as a medium example of the parishes which contain the bulk of the poor popula- tion, contains 2200 families, and estimating each family at nearly 6 individuals, which I believe is a truer estimate than 4^, the population of this paiish is 13,500. In this ^^arish there are 3 schools, and at these schools there are APPENDIX. 199 not more tnan 500 children. But each family can sup^ ply a child between 5 and 11 years of age, and thus there is only a fraction of the children at school. This district contains many of the city Arab tribe. How credible, Dr. Bell adds, is the remark which Mr. M'Cal- lum, the admirable Superintendent of the Reformatory School, made to me :— " It is a rare thing to meet with an educated juvenile criminal ; as a class they are deplor- ably ignorant." That the want of education is far greater in Glasgow than any thing which Mr. Strang or the superintendent of poUce has conjectured— for these gentlemen do not profess to do any thing more than hazard a conjecture— wiU appear by looking into the state of another large manufacturing town, where the Education question has been keenly discussed for many years, and the truth con- nected with it thoroughly expiscated. I refer to Man- chester; and as 's Manchester, I have no doubt, so are almost all our larg ' manufacturing towns. Our demand for Educational leg slation, extension, and improvement, is sometimes met by the statement that we have made such progress with our present means and machinery, that it is best to let things alone, and that in the course of years the evil will be completely met. In many parts of the country, no doubt, much progress in a right direc- tion has been made, but apart altogether from the case, of the thousands and hundreds of thousands whom the let-alone system consigns to ruin, until it grows adequate to the wants of the country, on the very improbable sup- position that it would ever do so, it is not the fact that the state of matters is getting better in our large towns under the present system. The fact is, that notwith. 200 APPENDIX. standing all the exertions made mder the present plan to meet the evil and mako headway, with all the steam up, we are going astern in our large manu- facturing towns ; the evil is growing worse and worse That appears from the following table, extracted from the Manchester and Salford Statistical Society's Ee- ports : — Year. In Manchester, Salford, Broughton, and Pendleton. ( Proportion. Day School Attendance. Total, public and private. Population. One In ! 1884-5 1 24,365 1 1 250,373 10,27 ' 1851 1 29,145 307,816 13,30 It appears, therefore, in respect to day-school attend- ance, at the present time, it is worse than it was 17 years ago ; inasmuch as from 1834-5 tr 1851, day-school attendance, considered in relation to ne population, has decreased from 1 in every 10 to 1 ii 13 odds. The following Table gives us th«^ educational wants ot Manchester, as ascertained in 1851 ; and taking that town as a standard by which to judge of our great centres of manufacture, it is dreadful to think of the total number of children in this kingdom whom our present system leaves parents, in so many instances, to bring up to the curses, and miseries, and crimes of ignorance — a disgrace, a danger, and a burden to the community. APPENDIX. 201 Estimated number of Chtldeen of thb "Working Classes, be- tween 3 AND 15, NEITHER "AT SCHOOL," NOR "AT WORK." PRIVATE INQUIRY, CENSUS RETURNS. INCLUDING CHILDREN NOT IN THB (Evidence, p. 470.) CENSUS RETURNS. (Evidence, pp. 359, 361.) Total No. of Chil- ) .„f. p.. J dren under 15 \ ^^^'^^^1 " under 8 32,11B Total No. of Children be- tween 3 and 15 99,193! Total Number of Children' Children of all classes between 3 and 15 98,490 attending school . . . 34,073 Total No. re- Children not at school. ceiving ani/ ■ but suppo-sed to be- kind of daily . long to tJie middle instruction.. 44,598 ! and upper classes. Under 3 634 , at home, in employ- ment, or receiving Total receivinff any private education,. 10,450 kind of daily in- (Assume four fifths of ! st)'wc'tio>i, between children "in em- 3 and 15 43,964 plovment" (Census Table) to belong to iChildreu of all classes in employment the working class- (same age) 14,660 '' Children receiving instruc- es) 11,T28 Children "a< schooV or tion," or " at work"" 58,624 " at work!'' 56,251 Children not described as i " receiving instruction" Children of the workir.g j either "at home" or "at classes not " at school" nor 1 school," or "in employ- ment" " at work" 42,942 39,866 Remarks on the Census Returns. 1. These returns include all children whom the differ- ent parties that made the returns considered to he re- ceiving any kind of daily instruction, either " under a master or governess at home," or by attending school. 2. The better educated classes of society would gen- erally make such returns pretty correctly ; and, there- fore^ comparatively few of the children of these classes 202 APPENDIX. will be found among such, as in tlit above table, are " undescribed." 3. The less educated and many of the working classes are known to have very lax notions respecting school attendance ; and, therefore, the returns from those classes may be considered to be much exaggerated. 4. And consequently it is probable that the number of children " undescribed" will fall short of the whole number of children of the ivorJcing classes alone, who, though not prevented by "work," are not ^^ attending day school." Remarks on the Private Inquiry. 1. The number of " children attending school" ex- ceeds by 5358 the corresponding returns of the census, Ev. p. 475 ; although the total number of children in this Table exceeds that with which it is compared by only 703 children; and therefore this Table makes a very liberal representation of the total school attendance. 2. No evidence has been adduced to show that the additional number (22,178) here taken to represent the children of the middle and upper classes " at home" or " in employment," together with those of the worhing classes " in employment," is likely to be below the actual number. 3. And, conseciuently, the statements in ths Tablei representing the average number of children of the working classes neither "at school" nor "in employ- ment," have no less claim for consideration than tlie Census Table, although it appears to differ in the result. It has been stated in evidence (pages 360, 391) that about " 54,670 children belonging to the lahorinn classes. APPENDIX. 203 whether employed or not, are not attending day schools, ^^ and that no reason has been alleged, that ought to be considered satisfactory, why " one half, at least," of that number ought not " to be in some school receiving edu- cation." It is indeed highly probable that, at the pre- sent time, there are not fewer than 20,000 or 30,000 children of the laboring classes kept from day school, without being in employment or detained at home through sickness, domestic need, or any other sufficient cause, and who ought therefore to be gathered into school The most extraordinary errors may lurk under gen- eral statistics ; the public^ judging hy them alone^ may cherish the delusion that all is right when much is wrong. — P. 143. How easily statistical facts, unless regarded in all their bearings, may be the means of producing a false impres- sion, is illustrated by the following Table. Looking only at the increase of attendance at the Church of England, British, and Denominational Schools, one would infer a great improvement in the educational state of Manches- ter; but further inquijy shows, that what one class of schools has gained another has lost ; that the scholars lave not increased as thej should have done, but only shifted their ground. From that Table, also, it will be seen, that while the utendance at Church and Denominational Schools has increased since 1834-5, from 5434 to 16,367, the attend- ance at Private Schools, of all classes, has decreased from 18,465 to 11,713. And hence it appears that the in- creased attendance at Public Schools is to be attributed 204 APPENDIX. in a nmch greater degree to the withdrawing of children from Private Schools, than to the bringing of additional children under tlie influence of education. This circumstance is the more important when taken m connection with the fact, that the increase of school attendance during the last 17 years has fallen short con- siderably of the increase of the population. X 9 >. ■5 c 0 o 1 1 ■. il (M •uoisipuaj «o CO OS m pUB 'uOJljailO-a ^ s 'paojiss of Tf «r •jajsaqonBHT ■* " 1 t-T ©« » _: ? 1 s J5 ^ ^ 1 3 H S" §^ oT u i ^ •nojaipuaj ■«1< ,^ o» li 1 « ptre 'uoiq^nojg : Jn eo s 'PJOJIBS ci- M ' ^ O s > O) ■* Oi 04 Liij 1 1 1 i S" 4.'nop[pu3j a> 50 o »o ! i ^ ^•-'^ pu8 'uon[3iioja • S g 'paojlBsj ■* T-T o" ; 5 g| > CO OD «o ^ . ^ s"* ••"JsaqDUBM ) m 00 ec i CO a: C 1 1 O cr -xi 5--g « 1 m -S.'^ ■<« ^ E E ^ Is^ - 1 "^ 2«« o « 5S? o«^l i^ll * ill I « £<= 3 §:2 APPENDIX. 205 WTiile it is the duty of the state to ) rovide ihi means of education, it is no less her duty to see that they are used. — P. 144. It appears to us plain that society should charge itself with the duty of promptly meeting the educational wants of our country. The very existence of Britain's power and position, the interests of religion, the welfare of the nation, are involved in this subject. The question of a complete rehgious education belongs to the churches ; the question of such an education as shall make men useful members of society belongs to the state; and while we would strongly deprecate a secular system of education, excluding the leading principles of a common Christianity from our common schools; unless the differ- ent denominations will so agree to make that practicable they will drive men into the secular system ; for surely better that these poor children should get some instruc- tion than that they be left without any knowledge—to hve, and sin, and die uninstructed as the brutes that perish. It is a scandal to the churches that there should be any difficulty found in agreeing on a system of rehgious instruction suitable to little children. We are sure that that difficulty has no foundation in the Word of God. What have these infants to do with those ecclesiastical and doctrinal questions which unhappily divido good men among us? If we that are adults can alw^ays join in private worship with each other, and on occasions in pubUc worship, and even sit down at the Lord's table with each other, recognising amid all our differences a common brotherhood and a common faith, it were a 18 206 APPENDIX. melancholy thing indeed if we cannot agree al*out the simple elements of religion that are to be taught to little children ; and that this wretched diflaculty should be an obstruction in the way of that national system of edu- cation which the state is bound to estabhsh, and without which no voluntary efforts will ever meet the wants of the country. It should encourage Government and the ParUament to know that the people belonging to the different de- nominations do not sympathise with the extremer views of their ministers, and that they would heartily rejoice in the establishment of a system of education which would meet the wants of the country, although it did not meet the views and demands of those ecclesiastics who would perversely sacrifice the interests of the peo- ple to their own crotchets, love of power, or denomina tional peculiarities. So long as this is — what, no doubt, it will ever be — a Protestant countiy, the Protestant religion should be that of national schools; but communicated in such a way as to give complete freedom to the consciences of Roman Catholics, or any other party declining to receive the religious instruction provided in the public schools. The children of Roman Catholic parents may be allowed to leave the school at the time of religious instruction ; or whenever, if such a system should be preferred, there were a sufficient number of Roman Cathohcs as to fur- nish children for a school supported out of the public funds, let these be applied to giving secular instruction only — the religious education of the Roman Catholic Church beiijg left to parents or priests. Thus the coun- try would sec ire that all these children receive a good APPENDIX. 207 secular education, and the country would not be em- ploying the public funds in the propagation of what th.3 Protestant kingdom regards as dangerous errors. Whatever arrangement the state may make as to these matters, one thing she is entitled and bound to do, and that is this, to require that every child within her bounds shall be educated. If the parents are able but unwilling to do that, they should be compelled to do it-- punished if they don't do it. If they are not able to do that, then it should be done at the public expense lo make sure that this is done, a system of inspection should be estabhshed. Such a system would not be found to interfere in the least degree with the rights and liberties of those who do their duty to their children and to th(. state; Uke other arrangements and laws for the preserv- ing of honesty and order, that system would only be i teLr, and a check, and a yoke to " evil-doers." Peopk might send their children to pubhc schools or pnvat, schools, national or denominational schools; but the state is entitled to see that they are receiving at least a plain education at some school The state is called on to extend the law to all man- ufactures, work, and service, which applies at present to the flax and cotton mills. Why should the children laboring in these manufactories enjoy a protection demed to othe^rs? what is good for them is good for others; what was needed by them is needed by thousands and tens of thousands of the children whose education i9 a^^crlected, and whose best interests are sacrificed to the nrofits of their masters and the cupidity of their parents. The state should require, as it does in other countries, that no child be allowed to engage in any kind of remu- 208 APPENDIX, nerative labor until it has received a plain education, oi unless arrangements are made, while it is engaged in service or in manufacture, to conduct and complete its education by so many hours a-day being set apart to that purpose. It is a most interesting fact that John Knox — in whose eye education bulked so large, that at the Reformation he proposed that one-fourth and more of the whole of the immense revenues of the Roman Catholic Church (the greater part of which were devoured by the Crown and nobles) should be sacredly devoted to the purpose of educating the children of the nation — three hundred years ago laid down the very principle which we advo- cate, and which is carried into practical effect with so much advantage in some parts of the Continent. It re-, fleets immortal honor on the memory of that great man, that the education of the people was with him a first ob- ject; one to be striven for most resolutely, and paid for most liberally ; and that he had the far-seeing eye to discern the great principle on which the working of the system should be based, — viz., the right and duty of the state to require that every child within its bounds shall receive such an education as to make it a useful member of so- ciety. He has embodied that in these words, extracted from the First Book of DiscipHne, which was laid before the G-reat Council of Scotland in 1560: — " This must be carefully provided, that no father, of what state or con- dition that ever he be, use his children at his own fan- tasie, especially in their youth-head; but all must be compelled to bring up their children in learning and rirtue.'' APPENDIX. 209 In the United States of America^ by one cf their last reports J complaints appear to come from every pari of the country that parents neglect to send their children to school. — P. 144. See the Twentieth Annual Report of the Board of Education, published at Boston, 1857. What an appaling picture of irreligion do our large towns present ! — P. 151. Edinburgh. — The Report of the Royal Commissioners on Religious Instruction proclaimed the fact, that one- third of the entire population of Edinburgh, or 50,000 people, had no fixed connection with any Cliristian Church. Glasgow. — In this city the proportion of its inhabit- ants which should be found attending church is, at the lowest computation, above 200,000. The whole amount of church accommodation there is for 140,000. So that if aU the churches were filled to overflowing, there would still be more than 60,000 in that city who were attend- ing no house of Grod. But one of the most benevolent and intelligent and Christian merchants of Glasgow in- formed me that many of the churches are not more than naif filled ; so that we may consider ourselves as making a very moderate calculation in concluding that more than 100,000 people in the city of Glasgow are living in a state of practical heathenism in this Christian land. These calculations are corroborated by the statistics of the City Missic^n, published in February, 1856. It ap- 18* 210 APPENDIX. pears from this document that they have divided the city into 54 districts, and that in these districts there are 25,5'IG families who are on the whole non-ehurch-going, and 15,675 families who never enter a church. These are nominally Protestants. It is estimated by them that each family consists of 4i individuals; and thus there are 110,699 individuals who are on the whole non- church-going, and 67,925 who never enter a church. An admirable Report, entitled '• Mission Churches of the United Presbyterian Church in Glasgow," fully bears out the preceding statements. From a thorough exam- ination of the state of the city, and careful calculations, they arrive at this conclusion, that in Glasgow there are " in addition to the Roman CathoHcs, 100,204 persons living in open contempt of the ordinances of religion. The astounding fact is thus reached, that we are hving in the midst of 180,000 fellow-citizens, popish and hea- then, that is, one-half of our entire population who stand in pressing need of our missionary exertions." London and its. Districts some years ago contained a population of 2,434,868. The city was increasing annu- ally at the rate of 25,000. The accommodation provided in the churches of all denominations would not accom- modate one-third of the whole population ; and although these were all full to overflowing, London would contain 649,297 hving in a state of practical heathenism. But it is a notorious fact that a great many of the churches in the metropolis are miserably thin ; and there can be 00 doubt of the ti'uth of the terrible statement, that more tlian One Million of the people of London are hv- ing in the hal'it of neglectiog the worship and house of God. APPENDIX. 211 We have had already fruit of our labors. — P. 154, The following statement regarding the Pleasance Ter- ritorial Mission was published by my colleague, the Rev. Dr. Hanna, to whose zeal and labors under God, thia interesting and important work owes much of its exist- ence and success. Pleasance Territorial Mission. " This mission has now been in operation for about four years. During that time we have succeeded in get- ting almost evey child of proper age within the district marked out for our operations, to attend our schools- There were nearly 200 children in tliat position when we began our work. There are not now more than half a dozen. Our success in this department has been com- plete. To realize it, we had to buy a site and build a school-house, at a cost of upwards of £600, and we had to give good salaries to our schoolmaster and school- mistress. But it was not the building of the school- house, nor the providing of a good education for all who chose to seek it, which accomplished the great object we had in view, namely, the bringing those children to school who otherwise Avould have grown up unedu- cated. It was the repeated visits of the missionary, and of the lady agents to the homes of the people, explam- mg to them the benefits which the school erected in their neighborhood was fitted to confer upon their families, and urging those wlio had children of the right age to seed them there to be tano-ht, which realized that 212 APPENDIX. end ; and it is by such means alone that the m <»ducated children of the lowest class of our population can ever be gathered into the school-house. " But it is far easier, within any district, to bring every child to school than every adult to church, especially where neglect of divine ordinances has been of long con- tinuance, and is the prevailing habit of the stair, or close, or street, in which such forsakers of the sanctuary are congregated; To reclaim such to habits of church-going is the most difficult thing to which Christian benevolence can put its hands. Concentrated and sustained effort, much patience and many prayers, are all required. But our labors in this department also have not been without good fruit. A small congregation, composed almost en- tirely of those who had been living in entire neglect of divine ordinances, has been gathering. For the lasi three years the ordinance of the Lord's Supper has been regularly dispensed. One hundred and twelve individuals have been admitted to the fellowship of the Church. Fifty of these had never been in connection with any Cburch ; so many as thirty-three of whom were far ad- vanced in life. There were forty-seven, with some of whom it had been ten, with some twenty, Avith some thirty years since they had sat down at the table of the Lord ; leaving only fifteen out of the hundred and twelve who were in full communion when they joined our little congregation. The ordinary attendance at puplic wor- ship, which began with about a dozen, now averages from eighty to a hundred in the forenoon, and from a hundred to a hundred and sixty in the afternoon. " The school-room in which the services have been aeld is now quite fuU . /^e have arrived at that stage APPENDIX. 213 when, unless a church and a minister be provided, but little further progress can be made. We are as far on — we have as many communicants and as large an attend- ance, as any of those territorial missions in whose steps we are following had, whea churches and ministers were provided for them. It is our intention to apply to the Church Courts to have Mr. Cochrane, our present mis- sionary, licensed and ordained as the minister of that little flock which he has gathered in from the wilderness. At a meeting lately, held with them, the communicants expressed this to be their unanimous and most earnest desire. It remains only that we provide a suitable place of worship. It has been resolved that upon this building there shall be no debt, and that beyond the present there shall be no second application made. Whatever be the sum put into the hands of the Committee ap- pointed by the Session, they are resolved not to go a farthing beyond it in their expenditure. We have, how- ever, not only a church to build, we must either enlarge our infant school-room or erect a more commodious one. The Government Inspector of Schools has imposed upon us the condition either of doing this, or of dismissing a number of the cliildren, which we cannot make up our minds to do. Without venturing to assign any scale of giving, it is our earnest hope that, by one effort of gene- rosity, we may be enabled to perfect the external appa- ratus of this mission, and so put it in condition for making that further and still greater progress which we can have no doubt that, when so furnished, it will, with the divine blessing, speedily realize." We are now about to build a regular place of worship in this locality and to form the people into a regular 214 APPENDIX. congregation under an ordained minister; and as wa must raise £1000 at least to meet the expenses of the building, the public are earnestly soHcited to lend us a helping hand. Any money sent to the Kev. Dr. Hanna, Ciistle Terrace, or the Rev. Dr. Guthrie, Salisbury Road, Edinburgh, will be gratefully received. We need sympa- thy and support, and we hope for them. The work would he found to he perfectly practicable —Pp. 166, 157. On this subject the Rev. Mr. Bonar, one of the minis- ters of the Canongate, in a pamplilet full of startling facts and earnest pleading, which he has just pubUshed, makes the following statement in reference to the case of the West-Port Territorial Church, which is all the more valuable not only as given by a clergyman who is thoroughly acquainted with the condition of the lower classes, but who belongs to a different church from those who have so successfully cultivated that distri<;t of our city : — " So far from being Utopian, the plan in- dicated has been justified by actual results. In one of the very worst localities of Edinburgh, to which, only a few years before, an infamous notoriety attached, in which, upon survty, it was found that in the main streets and adjoining wynds, out of 411 families, only 45 were attached to any Christian communion, 70 were Roman Catholics, and 296 were entirely uncon- nected with any church ; wherein, out of a gross popu- lation of 2000, 1500 were Uving strangers to the observ- ance of religion, and in which 290 children were grow- ing up wholly untaught ; a district in which the mora APPENDIX. 21 0 and p -ysical condition of the community was most de- plorable, one fourth being paupers and another fourth street-beggars, thieves, and prostitutes; — in this locality a wonderful change has been brought about. The West- Port was divided into twenty districts, each containing twenty families. A school was opened — not on the sys- tem of gratuitous instruction — first of all, at the end of the close where the atrocities of Burke and Hare had been committed, in an old deserted tannery, approached by a flight of wooden steps. At the outset appearances were abundantly unpromising, and on the first occasion, after the advices, requests, and entreaties which had for many previous weeks been brought to bear upon those whose highest good was contemplated and desired, only about a dozen adults, and these chiefly old women, were present. Now there is a substantial church, well at- tended, a,id not long since enlarged by the addition of a gallery ; schools, week-day and evening, largely attend- ed likewise, with the other desiderata of a hbrary and a savings-bank, a washing-house, and a female industrial school The problem has been solved. An instance was afibrded, to adopt the words of Dr. Chalmers' biog- rapher, * in which the depths of city ignorance and vice have been sounded to the very bottom ; nor can the possibility of cleansing the foul basement storey of our social edifice be doubted any longer.' Nor do we won- der that the great Christian philanthropist — ^for so he must be regarded by all unprejudiced minds — hailed what he was spared to see as ' the streaks and dawnings of a better day,' and was willing, ' after the struggles and discomfitures of thirty years,' to ' depart in peace, and leave the further prosecution with comfort and calm- ness in the hands of another generation.' " RAGGED SCHOOLS. /by THOMAS GUTHRIE, D,\> W- ^- W- WHO HAS HER NAME GRAVEN AT FULL LENGTH ON THE GRATEFUL HEARTS OF MANY CHILDREN SAVED BY MEANS OF THAT #rigiEil ^Efigifi cfirli00l, WHICH HAS OWED 80 MUCH OF ITS SUCCESS TO HER GENEROUS, ZEALOUS, AND UNTIRING LABORS. (5) OB, PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. FIRST PLEA. ON approaching Edinburgh from the west, after the general features which distance presents, — dome, and spire, and antique piles of building, *}ie Castle standing in the fore- ground, while Arthur Seat raises its lion-like back between the city and the sea, — the first object which attracts the eyes of a stranger is a structure of exquisite and surpassing beauty. It might be a palace for our Queen : — it is a hospital. Near by, embowered in wood, stands an edifice of less pretensions, but also great extent : it is another hospital. Within a bow- shot of that, again, some fine open towers rise 1* (5; 6 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, from the wood over a fair structure, with its Grecian pillars and graceful portico : — it is anotlier hospital. Now in the city, and wh.eel- ing round the base of the Castle rock, he drives on by Lauriston. Not far away, on the outskirts of the town, pleasantly planted in a beautiful park, bordered with trees, stands an old-fashioned building : — it is another hos- pital. In his way along Lauriston, within a stone-cast of him, his eye catches the back of a large and spacious edifice, which looks beauti- fully out on the Meadows, the low Braid Hills, and the distant Pentlands : — it is another hos-- pital. A few turns of the wheel, and before him, within a fine park, or rather ornamental garden, stands the finest structure of oui town, — a masterpiece of Inigo Jones, — with a princely revenue of £15,000 a year : — it is an- other hospital. The carriage now jostles over u stone ; tlie stranger turns his head, and sees. but some hundred yards away, a large Dutch- like structure, stretching out its long lines of windows, with the gilded ship, the sign of commerce, for weather-vane, on its summit :— PLEAS FOR RAGCED SCHOOLS. 7 that is another hospital. Our friend concludes, and not without some reason, that, instead of tlie "Modern Atliens," Edinburgh might be called the City of Hospitals. I have no quarrel at present with these insti- tutions : their management is in the hftnds of wise, excellent, and honorable men ; and, in so far as they fail to accomplish the good in- tended, it is not that they are mismanaged. The management is not bad ; but in some of its elements the system itself is vicious. God never made men to be reared in flocks, but in families. Man is not a gregarious animal, other than that he lierds together with his race in towns, a congeries of families. Born, as he is, with domestic affections, whatever inter- feres with their free play is an evil to be shunned, and, in its moral and physical results, to be dreaded. God framed and fitted man to grow up, not under the hospital, but the do- mestic roof, — whether that roof be the canvas of an Arab tent, the grassy turf of a Highland shieling, or the gilded dome of a palace. And as man was no more made to be reared in a 8 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, hospital than the human foot to grow in a Chinese shoe, or the Imman body to be boui.d in ribs of iron or whalebone, — acting in both cases in contravention of God's law, — you are as sure in the first case to inflict injury on his moral, as in the second on his physical consti- tution. They commit a grave mistake who forget that injury as inevitably results from flying in the face of a moral or mental, as of a physical law. So long as rice is rice, you can- not rear it on the bald brow of a hill-top : it loves the hollows and the valleys, with their water-floods ; and so long as man is man, more or less of injury will follow the attempt to rear him in circumstances for which his Maker never adapted him. But apart from this, who and what are the children that, under the roof of these crowded hospitals, receive shelter, food, clothing, and instruction ? It is much deplored by many, and can l)e denied by none, that in some of these hospitals not a few of the inmates are the children of those wlio are able, and ought to be willing, — and, but for the temptations PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 9 these institutions present, would be ready, — to train up their children as olive plants around the domestic table, and rear them within the tender, kind, holy, and heaven-blessed cir- cle of a domestic home. There are nursed those precious affections toward parents, broth- ers, sisters, and smiling babes, which, for man's good in this life, and the well-being of society, are worth more than all Greek and Roman lore. I cannot better convey my ideas and feelings on this matter than by saying, that when a Governor of Heriot's Hospital, — a^ hospital which enjoys the care and attentioii both of the Town Council and the city clergy^ — I was astonished to be applied to by a re- spectable man on behalf of his son. Let me not be misunderstood. I do not much blame parents and guardians for availing themselves of these hospitals, even when they might do otherwise. A well-furnished table, lodging the most comfortable, a first-rate education, in some instances valuable bursaries, and occa- sionally, when launched into the world, a sum of money to float the favored pupil on, — these 10 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, present the temptation to tear the child from a mother's side, and send it away from a fa- ther's care, which it is not easy to resist. Still, to resume my narrative, I was amazed to re- ceive such an application from such a quarter. The applicant was a sober and excellent man, living in what the world would count respect- able circumstances. Knowing this, neverthe- less I asked him, " Can you give your boy por- ridge in the morning ? " " Yes," said he, sur- prised at such a question. " Potatoes to din- ner ? " " Certainly." " Porridge at night ? " He looked astonished : he knew, as I and all his neighbors did, that he was able to do a great deal more. " Then," I said, " my friend, were I you, it should not be till they had laid me in my coffin that that boy of mine should lose the blessings of a father's fireside, and be cast amid the dangers of a public hospital." I may perhaps add, that I thought him a wise man, for he took my advice. And before leav- ing these hospitals, I think it right also to add, in justice to the management of Heriot's Hospital, and to the honor of Mr. Duncan PLEAS von RAGGED SCHOOLS. 11 Maclaren, by whom the scheme was proposed and carried, that some £3,000 a year is applied to the maintenance of schools scattered up and down the city, where the children of decent tradesmen, mechanics, and laborers, receive a ^ood gratis education. Now, to resume, for convenience' sake, the company of my stranger friend. Skirting along the ruins of the old city wall, and pass- ing down the Vennel, we descend into the Grassmarket, — a large, capacious place, with the' exception of some three or four mod- ern houses, still standing as it did two centu- ries ago, — the most perfect specimen in our city of the olden time. Its old massive fronts, reared as if in picturesque contempt of modern uniformity, — some with the flat roofs of the East, and others of the Flemish school, with their sharp and lofty gables topped by the rose, the thistle, and the fleur de lis, — stLl look down on that square as in the days when it was one sea of heads, every eye turned to the great black gallows, which rose high over all, and from which, amid 12 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR, the hushed and awful silence of assembled thousands, rose the last psalm of a hero of the Covenant, who had come there to play the man. In a small well-conditioned town, with the exception of some children basking on the pavement, and playing with the dogs that have gone over with them to enjoy the sunny side, between the hours of ten and one, you miss the Scripture picture of " boys and girls playing in the street." Not so in the Grass- market. In two-thirds of the shops, on one side of this square (for we have counted them) spirits are sold. The sheep are near the slaughter-house, — the victims are in the neigh borhood of the altars. The mouth of almosi every dose is filled with loungers, worse thaii Neapolitan lazzaroni, — bloated and brutal figures, ragged and wretched old men, bold a ad fierce-looking women, and many a half- clad mother, shivering in cold winter with her naked feet on the frozen pavement, and a skeleton infant in her arms. On a summer day, when in the blessed sunshine and warm PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 13 air misery itself will sing, dashing in and out of these closes, careering over the open ground, engaged in their rude games, arrayed in flying drapery, here a leg out and there an arm, are crowds of children. Their thin faces tell how 111 they are fed. Their fearful oaths tell how ill they are reared. Yet the merry laugh, the hearty shout, and screams of delight, as some unfortunate urchin, at leap-frog, measures his length upon the ground, tell that God made childhood, to be happy, and how even misery will forget itself in the buoyancy and vivacity of youth. We get hold of one of these boys. Poor fellow ! it is a bitter day ; and he has neither shoes nor stockings. His naked feet are red, swollen, cracked, ulcerated with the cold ; a thin, thread-worn jacket, with its gaping rents, is all that protects his breast ; beneath his shaggy bush of hair he shows a face sharp with want, yet sharp also with intelligence be- yond his years. That little fellow has learned to be already self-supporting. He has studied the arts ; — ^lie is a master of impostui-e. lying;^ 2 14 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, begging, stealing. Small blame to him, but much to those who have neglected him, — he had otherwise pined and perished. So soon as you have satisfied him that you are not con- nected with the police, you ask him, " Where is your father ?" Now, hear his story, — and there are hundreds can tell a similar tale. " Where is your father ?" " He is dead, sir." " Where is your mother ?" " Dead, too." " Where do you stay ?" " Sister and T, and my little brother, live with granny." " What is she ?" " She is a widow woman." " What does she do ?" " Sells sticks, sir." " And can she keep you all ?" " No." " Then how do you live ?" " Go about and get bits of meat, sell matches, and sometimes get a trifle from the carriers for running an errand." " Do you go to school ?" " No, never was at school ; attended sometimes a Sabbath-school, but have not been there for a long time." " Do you go to church ?" " Never was in a church." " Do you know who made you ?" " Yes, God made me." " Do you say your prayers ?" " Yes, mother taught me a prayer before she died ; PLEAS FOR RAGCxED SCHOOT.S. 15 and I say it to granny afore I lie down." " Have you a bed ?" " Some straw, sir." Our stranger friend is astonished at this,— not we. Alas ! we have ceased to be aston- ished at any amount of misery suffered, or suffering, in our overgrown cities. You have, says he, splendid hospitals, where children are fed, and clothed, and educated, whose parents, in instances not a few, could do all that for them ; you have beautiful schools for the gratis education of the children of respectable trades- men and mechanics : what provision have you made for these children of crime, misery, and misfortune? Let us go and see the remedy which this rich, enlightened. Christian city has provided for such a crying evil. We blush, as we tell him there is none. Let us explain ourselves. Such children cannot pay for edu- cation, nor avail themselves of a gratis one, even though offered. That urchin must beg and steal, or he starves. With a number like liimself, he goes of a morning as regularly to that work as the merchant to his shop or the tradesman to his place of labor. They are 16 PKED-TTME AND HAEVEST ; OR, turned out, — driven forth sometimes, — to get their meat, like sheep to the hills, or cattle to the field ; and if they don't bring home a cer- tain supply, a drunken father and a brutal beating await them. For example : I was returning from a meet- ing one night, about twelve o'clock, in a fierce blast of wind and rain. In Princes street, a shivering boy with a piteous voice, pressed me to buy a tract. I asked the child why he was out in such a night, and at such an hour. He had not got his money ; he dared not go home without it ; he would rather sleep in a stair all night. I thought, as we passed a lamp, that I had seen him before. I asked him if he went to church. " Sometimes to Mr. Guthrie's," was his reply. On looking again, I now re- cognized him as one I had occasionally seen in the Cowgate chapel. Muffled up to meet the weather, he did not recognize me. I asked him what his father was ? "I have no father, sir ; he is dead." His mother ? " She is very poor." " But why keep you out here ?" Then reluctantly thq truth came out. I knew lier PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 17 well, and had visited her wretched dwelling. She was a tall, dark, gaunt, gipsy-looking woman, who, notwithstanding a cap of which it could be but premised that it had once been white, and a gown that it had once been black, had still some traces of one who had seen bet- ter days ; but, now she was a drunkard. Sin had turned her into a monster ; and she would have beaten that poor child within an inch of death, if he had been short of the money, by her waste of which she starved him, and fed her own accursed vices. Now, by this anecdote illustrating to my stranger friend the situation of these unhap- py children, I added that, nevertheless, they might get education, and secure some measure both of common and Christian knowledge. But mark how, and where. Not as in the days of our blessed Saviour, when the tender motlier brought her child for his blessing. The jailer brings them now. Their only pas- sage to school is through the Police Office ; their passport is a conviction of crime ; and in this Cliristian and enlightened city it is 2* 18 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST only within tlie dreary walls of a prison that they are secure either of school or Bible. When one thinks of their own happy boys at home, bounding free on the green, and breath- ing the fresh air of heaven, — or of the little fellow that climbs a father's knee, and asks the oft-repeated story of Moses, or of Joseph, — it is a sad thing to look in through the eyelet of a cell-door, on the weary solitude of a child spelling its way through the Bible. It makes one sickJ;o hear men sing the praises of the fine education of our prisons. How much bet- ter and holier were it to tell us of an educa- tion that would save the necessity of a prison- school ! I like well to see the life-boat, with her brave and devoted crew ; but with far more pleasure, from the window of my old country manse, I used to look out at the Bell Rock Tower, standing erect amid the stormy waters, where in the mists of day the bell was rung, and in the darkness of the night the light w#as kindled. Thus mariners were not saved from the wreck, but saved from being wrecked at all. Instead of first punishing crime, and PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 19 then, through means of a prison education, trying to prevent its repetition, we appeal to men's common sense, and common interest, to humanity, and Christianity, if it were not bet- ter to support a plan which would reverse this process, and which seeks to prevent, that there may be no occasion to punish. I may be asked, would not this be accom- plished by the existence and multiplication of schools, where, in circumstances of necessity, a gratis education may be obtained? We an- swer, Certainly not. Look how the thing works, and is working. You open such a school in some poor locality of the city, where, among the more decent and well-provided chil- dren, there is a number of shoeless, shirtless, cap- less, ragged boys, as wild as desert savages. The great mass of those in the district you have not swept into yoar school ; but, granting that through moral influence, or otherwise, you do succeed in bringing out a small per centage of these,— mark what happens. In a few days this and that one fail to answer at roll-call. Now, an essential element in successful educa- 20 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST J OR, tion is regular attendance. In truth, the world would get on as ill were the sun to run his course to-day, and take a rest or play the tru- ant to-morrow, and be so irregular in his movements that no one could count upon his appearance, as will the work of education with an attendance at school constantly bro- ken and interrupted. Feeling this, the teacher Bceks the abode of the child, climbs some three or four dark stairs, and at length finds himself in such an apartment as we have often seen ; there is neither board, nor bed, nor Bible. Around the cinders, gathered from the street, sit some half-naked children, — his poor ragged pupil among the number. " Your child," sayS' he to the mother, " has been away from school.'' Now let the Christian public listen to her re- ply. " I could not afford to keep him there ; he maun do something for his meat." I ven- ture to say, I confidently affirm, that there are now many hundreds of cliildren in these cir- cumstances in EdinbTirgh. I ask the Christian publio, What are we to do ? One of two things we must do. Look at them. First, we mav PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 21 leave the boy ^lone. Begging, the trade in which he is engaged, being next neighbor to thieving, he soon steals. He is apprehended and cast into prison ; and having been marched along the public street, shackled to a policeman, and returned to society with the jail-brand on his brow, any tattered shred of character that hung loose about him before is now lost. As the French say, and all the woi^d knows, " Ce n'est que h premier pas qui corde." He descends, from step to step, till a halter closes his unhappy career ; or, he is passed away to a penal settlement, the victim of a poverty for which he was not to blame, and of a neglect on the part of others for which a righteous God will one day call them to judgment. There is another alternative ; and it is that we advocate. Remove the obstruction which stands between that poor child and the school- master and the Bible ; roll away the stone that lies between the living and the dead. Since he cannot attend your school unless he starves, give him food ; feed him, in order to 22 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR, educate him ; let it be food - of the plainest clieapest kind ; but by that food open his way ; by that powerful magnet to a hungry child, draw him to school. Strolling one day with a friend among the romantic scenery of the crags and green val- leys around Arthur Seat, we came at length to St. Anthony's Well, and sat down on the great %lack stone beside it, to have a talk with the ragged boys who pursue their calling there. Their tinnies were ready with a draught of the clear cold water, in hope of a half-penny. We thought it would be a kindness to them, and certainly not out of character in us, to tell them of the living water that springeth up to life eternal, and of Him who sat on the stone of Jacol)'s Well, and who stood in the Temple and cried, " If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." By way of intro- duction, we began to question them about schools. As to the boys themselves, one was fatherless, — the son of a poor widow ; the father of the other was alive, but a man of low habits and bad character. Both were poorly PLEAS FOR RACiOEl) SCHOOLS. 2H clotlied. The one had never been at school ; the other had sometimes attended a Sabbath- school. These two little fellows were self-sup- porting,— living by such shifts as they were then engaged in. Encouraged by the success of Sheriff Watson, who had tlie honor to lead this enterprise, the idea of a Ragged School was then floating in my brain ; and so, with reference to the scheme, and by way of experi- ment, I said, " Would you go to school, if, be- sides your learning, you were to get breakfast, dinner, and supper there?" It would have done any man's heart good to have seen the flash of joy that broke from the eyes of one of them, — the flush of pleasure on his cheek, as, hearing of three sure meals a day, the boy leapt to his feet, and exclaimed, " Aye will I, sir, and bring the haill land^ too ;" * and then, as if afraid I might withdraw what seemed to him so large and munificent an offer, he exclaimed, " I'll come for but my dinner, sir." I have abundant statistics before me to prove that there are many hundreds of children in ♦ The whole tenement 24 this town in circumstances as hopeless as those I describe. They must be fed, in order to re- ceive that common moral and religious edu- cation, without which, humanly speaking, thev are ruined both for this world and the next. How many there are in still more hopeless circumstances I never knew till I had gone to see one of the saddest sights a man could look on. The Night Asylum was not then estab- lished ; but the houseless, the inhabitants of arches and stair-foots, those, like the five boys lately sent to prison, who had no home but an empty cellar in Shakspeare Square, — found, when they sought it, or dared to seek it, a shelter in the Police Office. I had often heard of the misery it presented ; and, detained at a meeting till past midnight, I went with one of my elders, who was a Commissioner of Police, to visit the scene. In a room, the walls of which were thickly hung with bunches of skel- eton keys, the dark lanterns of the thief, and other instruments of housebreaking, sat the lieutenant of the watch. Seeing me at that untimely hour, handed in by one of the Com- PLEAS VOU K.UJGEl) SCHOOLS. 25 iiiissioners, he looked surprise itself. Having satisfied him that there was no inisdeDioanor, we proceeded, under the charge of an intelli- gent officer, to visit the wards. Our purpose is not to describe the strangest, saddest collection of human misery I ever saw. but to observe that not a few children, having no home on earth, had sought and found there a shelter for the night. " They had not where to lay their head." Turned adrift in the morn- ing, and subsisting as they best could during the day, this wreck of society, like the wreck of the sea-shore, came drifting in again at even- ing tide. After visiting' a number of wards and cells, I remember looking down from the gallery on an open space, where five or six hu- man beings lay on the bare pa-vement, buried in slumber ; and right opposite the stove, with its ruddy light shining full on his face, lay a poor child who attracted my special attention. He was miserably clad ; he seemed about eight years old ; he had the sweetest face 1 ever saw ; his bed was the hard stone pavement ; his pil- low a brick ; and, as he lay calm in sleep, for 26 SEED-TIME AXD HARVEST : OR, getful of all his sorrows, he looked a picture of injured innocence. His story, which I learned from the officer, was a sad one ; but one such as too many could tell. He had neither father nor mother, brother nor friend, in the wide world. His only friends were the Police, — his only home their office. How he lived they did not know ; but, sent away in the morning, he usually returned at night. The floor of a ward, the stone by the stove, was a better bed than a stair-foot. I could not get that boy out of my head or heart for days and nights together. I have often re- gretted til at some effort was not made to save him. Some six or seven years are by and gone since then ; and before now, launched on the sea of liuman passions, and exposed to a thou- sand temptations, he has too probably become a melancholy wreck. What else could any man who believes in the depravity of human nature, and knows the danger of the world, expect him to become ? These children, whom we leave in ignorance, and starve into crime, must grow up into criminals, — the pest, the PLEAS FOR IIA(;CtED SCHOOLS. 27 shame, the burden, the punishment of society ; and in the increasing expenses of public chari- ties, work-liouses, poor-rates, prisons, police- officers, and superior officers of justice, what do we see, but the judgments of a righteous God, and hear, but the echo of these solemn words : " Be sure your sin will find you out." From statistics before me, I repeat it again, — and it ought to be repeated till a remedy be provided, — that there are at least a thousand children in this city (others say some thousands, b«it I would rather understate than in the least exaggerate the case) who cannot receive such an education as will bless them, and make them a blessing, unless, along with the meam of education, they are provided with the meam. of keeping body and soul together. Let the Christian public observe, that while such schools as Lady Effingham's, Lady Anderson's, and the Duchess of Gordon's, and others of the same description, are most creditable to the large-hearted benevolence of these orna- ments of the upper and best friends of the lower classes, and are the means of incalcula- 28 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, ble good to a low class, yet they hardly touch that loivest class for whose interests I have stepped forth from my own peculiar walk, and now venture, through the press, on this appeal. The fact may be doubted by some who have never left their drawing-rooms to visit, like angels of mercy, the abodes of misery and crime ; but no visitor of the Destitute Sick Society, — no humble and hard-T^ irking city missionary, — no enlightened governor of our prisons, — no superintendent of Night Asylum •)r House of Refuge, — none who, like myself, has been called on to explore, amid fever and famine, the depths of human misery in this city, and has come in close, and painful, and heart-sickening contact with its crimes and poverty, — I say, none of these will doubt it, — at least I have met with none who doubted it. I implore the public to remember, that we have not here the miserable consolation that tlie in- fected will die off. They are mixed with so- ciety,— each an active centre of corruption. Around them you can draw no Cordon Sani- taire. The leaven i& ev3ry day leavening PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 29 more and more of the Imnp. Parents are be- getting and bringing up children in their own image ; while ignorance, and vice, and crime, are shooting ahead even of the increase of that population. I have long felt inclined to add my experi- ence to that of many benevolent and Christian men who have gone before me, regarding the deplorable and dangerous state of the class who form the substratum of society, the miser- able provision made even for decent poverty, — for those whom the hand of God has smit- ten,— and the manifold temptations the poor are thereby exposed to. But the pressure of other avocations, the difficulty of getting the public ear in times, of excitement, and the lack of any approved remedy for the evil in its first causes, must explain my silence in the past. We had been for some time inclined to hold that such a remedy was only to be found in such schools as we now propose ; but, till the experience of Aberdeen and of Dundee had turned what was but a presumption into a fact, we had not coura^-e to venture on the 30 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR, proposal. We see no way of securing the amelioration and salvation of these forlorn, outcast, and destitute children, but by making their maintenance a bridge and stepping-stone to their education. It has been tried and proved, that without some such instrumental- ity you cannot get these children to school ; at least you cannot get more than the smallest percentage of them ; and though you could, — though you got the hungry, shivering creature into your class, — what heart has he for learn- ing, Avhose pale face and hollow eyes tell you he is starving? Wliat teacher could have the heart to punish a child who has not broken his fast that day ? What man of sense would mock with books a boy who is starving for bread? Let Christian men an- swer our Lord's question ; let every parent think of it : — " What father, if his child asked for bread, would give him a stone?" And what is English grammar, or the Rule of Three, or the A, B, C, to a hungry child, but a stone ? I have often met this difficulty in dealing PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 31 with the grown up, who possessed what the child does not, — sense to understand the im- portance of the lesson. I have seen it in a way not to be forgotten. In the depth of a hard winter, when visiting in the Cowgate, I entered a room where, save a broken table, there was nought of furniture but a crazy bed- stead, on which, beneath a thin ragged cover- let, lay a very old, grey-headed woman. I be- gan to speak to her, as to one near eternity, about her soul ; on which, raising herself up, and stretching out a bare, withered arm, she cried most piteously, " I am cauld and hungry.'^ " My poor old friend," I said, " we will dc what we can to relieve these wants ; but let me in kindness remind you that there is some thing worse than either cold or hunger.' "Aye, but, sir," was the reply, " if ye were as cauld and as hungry as I am, ye could think o' naething else." She read me a lesson that day which I have never forgotten ; and which, .IS the advocate of these poor forlorn children, I ask a humane and Christian public to apply to thoir case. The public may plant schools thick 32 SEED-TIME .\XD HARVEST, OR, as trees of tlie forest ; but be assured, unless, besides being trees of knowledge, — to borrow a figure from the isles of the Pacific, — they are also bread-fruit trees, few of these children will seek their shadow, far less sit under it with great delight. Is any one so ignorant of human nature as to suppose that, offered nothing but learning, these destitute children may be brought to school by the mere power of moral suasion ? I would like to know how many of the well fed, well-clothed, well-disciplined children, who crowd our schools, would prefer the school- room to the play-ground, unless their parents compelled tlieir attendance ? It may be an- swered. Try the power of moral suasion on the parents. Now, tn e put it to any reasonable man, if it be not true, tliat to expect an abandoned, drunken ruffian, — a miserable, ignorant, pover- ty-struck widow, whose powers, botli of body and mind, griei and want have paralyzed, — those who themselves are strangers to tlie bene- fits of education, —who are living without God and without liope in tlie world, — wlio are part- PLEAS FOB BAGGED SCHOOLS. 38 ly dependent for their own stinted subsistence, and, in too many instances, the feeding of their vices, on the fruits of their children's plunder or begging, — we ask, if to expect that such will compel their children to attend school, is not seeking for grapes on thorns, or figs on thistles ? We have already indicated how we propose to meet these difficulties : let us be a little more explicit. What we then propose to do, with the intent of meetiug, and the confidence of overcoming, difficulties never yet fairly grappled with, and, with God's blessing, of en- grafting on the fair stock of civilization and Christianity these wild vines, so that they shall yield the wine which is pleasant both to God and man, is this : in place of one great insti- tution, which would be attended by many dis- advantages, let there be an adequate number of schools set down in the different districts of the city, so that each school shall contain no more than a manageable number of chil- dren,— not more than a teacher can thorough- ly control and break in. These Arabs of the 34 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, city are wild as those of the desert, and mnsi be broken into three habits, — those of disci pline, learning, and industry, not to speak of cleanliness. To accomplish this, our trust is in the almost omnipotent power of Christian kindness. Hard words and harder blows are thrown away here. With these, alas ! they are too familiar at home, and have learned to be as indifferent to them as the smith's dog to the shower of sparks. And without entering into many details, it may be enough to say that in the morning they are to break their fast on a diet of the plainest fare, — then march from their meal to their books ; in the afternoon they are again to be provided with a dinnei of the cheapest kind, — then back again tc school ; from which, after supper, they return, not to the walls of a hospital, but to their own home. There, carrying with them many a holy lesson, they may prove Christian mis- sionaries to these dwellings of darkness and sin. This is no vain expectation. Our confi- dence is in Him who has said, " Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings He ordaineth PLEAS FOn RAGGED SCHOOLS. 35 strength.'' And we are all the more confident of his blessing, because we are in this the best way fulfilling the duty laid on us in his promise to the forlorn, — " When thy father and thy mother forsake thee, then the Lord will take thee up." A faithful God, He does not this by way of miracle, but by way of means ; put- ting it into the hearts of kind and Christian people to do a father's and a mother's part to those who are fatherless and motherless, or to those still more unhappy children who have parents, but would be better without them. To work this scheme to its greatest advan- tage and capability of good, we would strong- ly recommend the adoption of some such plan as this : In place of benevolent individuals contenting themselves with subscribing to its funds, and taking no further interest in the welfare of its objects, let each select one child or more, as his means may warrant, — say one child. The expenses of its education and main- tenance at school are met by him : this is known to the child ; and thus, taught to regard him as its benefactor, the better and kindlier feel- 36 ings of its nature are brought into activity, and nurtured into strength. Within the arms of his gratitude man can embrace a benevolent individual, but not a benevolent community. What pauper ever left a charity workhouse with a blessing on its Directors ? But indi- vidual charity has been remembered in the widow's prayer ; and some have walked our streets who could say with the patriarch, " When the eye saw me, then it blessed me." We attach the utmost importance to this plan. By means of it, the person through whose kindness the child is placed and paid for at school, — who comes there occasionally to watch the progress of a plant which he had found flung on the highway, to be trodden un- der foot, but which he has transplanted into this nursery of good, — becomes an object of kindly regard to the child. The boy fears his displeasure, and aims at his approbation. Kindness softens the child's heart ; his love and gratitude are kindled ; and so we call in the most effectual allies in our effoi-t to save him from ruin. In thi? wav. moreover, tlio PLEAS FOR RAGCxED SCHOOLS. 37 child has secured a patron and protector, — one to take him by the hand when his term at school is closed, and to stand by him in the battle of life. Selecting a boy in whom we have learned to take a kindly interest, we will feel it to be our business to guide him, by our counsel and influence, into some way of well- doing. We will charge ourselves with his welfare. He will not have to complain, — " No man careth for my soul." And thus through the influence of kindly feelings on his part, and Christian care on ours, in many a now unhappy child society might gain a useful member, in- stead of receiving an Ishmaelite, " whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand against him." Ou the management of these schools we have only to add, that alongside a common and Christian education, we will introduce such work as may suit the age of the children, and their condition in life, with the double ad- vantage of lessening, by its profits, the ex- pense of maintenance, and forming in the chil- dren habits of industry, which will fit them for 4 38 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, an honest and useful life. And thus, through these schools, heaven smiling upon them, we will be able to address these children in the language of God to the patriarch, — " I will bless thee, and make thee a blessing." We know no solid objection to which our scheme is open. Not that we mean to say it will prove a good without any mixture of evil, or that it cannot by any possibility be abused ; but only that, if these are objec- tions, they are objections to which the best and noblest schemes of Christian benevolence are exposed. However, our extreme anxiety for the success of this scheme leads us to ad- dress ourselves to some objections that may be conjured up against it. Now, we beg, in the first place, to observe, that this is no scheme to relieve those whose vices have brought them to ruin, or whose in- dolence keeps them in poverty We fully accord with this sentiment of the apostle, " He that will not work should not eat." This ig both the judgment of Scripture and of reason. In very mercy to this world, God has linked PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 39 crime and suffering together ; and it is a short- sighted benevolence which, interfering with that law of Providence, attempts to dissolve the connection. Let guilty parents suffer They have eaten sour grapes, — let their teeth be set on edge. But has not God said, " What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge ? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel." And the question which we put to a humane and Christian pub lie is this : Are we, without any efficieni effort to save their innocent and helpless off spring, to allow these guilty parents to draw them down'into the same gulf with themselves ? We do not propose to contaminate our hospi- tals with such children. Surely it would be one thing to rear the children of the wicked in affluence — to provide them with a ^nished education — to house them in s.plendid palaces ; and another thing to save them from the pangs of hunge", and from the crimes to which hun- 40 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, ger tempts and drives them ; to bless them with a simple education, by which they might live decently in this world, and be taught the way to a ])etter. Let me put a case ! In the College Wynd of the old Greyfriars' parish, I found a mother, with some three young chil- dren by her side, and a pale, sickly infant in her arms. She was a drunkard. But there was no bed there, save some straw ; there was no fire, save some smouldering cinders ; there was not a morsel of bread in the house. I learnt this from being constantly interrupted, while speaking to her, by the misei'tible object in her arms incessantly saying something to its mother. On asking what it said, she burst into tears, and told me it was asking for bread and she had none to give it. They had not broken their fast that day ; and it was now past noon. Fresh from a happy country par- ish, I was horrified at such a scene ; and sent out for a loaf. They fell on it like ravenous beasts. Now, the question I ask, and to which I crave an answer, is this : Should I have left these children to die of hunger, because PLEAS FOR RAGOED SCHOOLS. 41 their motlier was a drunkard? If not,— if what I did was rather to be commended than condemned, — how ought this scheme to com- mend itself to the zealous support of Christian men ? That food, perhaps, served to spin out for but a little while their feeble thread of life : it secured to them no permanent benefit. But let the public observe, that the charity given in the way we plead for does what common charity does not ;— it secures for every child whose hunger it allays, and whose life it saves, the blessings of a common and a Christian education. We can fancy some people being at first sight alarmed at our scheme, as one which will entail additional burdens on the public. Grant that it did : — the benefit would more than com- pensate for the burden. "There is he that scattereth and yet increaseth ; " and,— never were the words more applicable, — '' there is ho that withholdeth the hand, and it tendeth to poverty.'' But it is not thus that we meet the objection. We meet it fairly in the face. Wc deny that any additional burden wortli men- 4* 42 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OB, tioiiing will press on the public. Do you fancy tliat, by rejecting this appeal, and refus- ing to establish these schools, you, the public, will be saved the expense of maintaining these outcasts ? A great and demonstrable mistake. They live just now ; and how do they live ? Not by their own honest industry, but at your expense. They beg and steal for themselves ; or their parents beg and steal for them. You are not relieved of the expense of their suste- nance by refusing my plea. The Old Man of the Sea sticks to the back of Sinbad. Surely it were better for Sinbad to teach the old man to walk on his own feet. I pray the public to remember, that begging and stealing, while in most cases poor trades to those who pursue them, are dear ones to the public. A friend just now tells me of an old beggar, accom- plished in his vocation, who used to lament over the degeneracy of the age, saying, that " men nowadays didna ken how to beg ; that Kelso iveel beggit was worth fifteen shillings ony day." These beggars that you are breed- ing on the body politic are costly as well as PL15AS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 43 troublesome members of society. Catch yon little fellow, with his pale face and piteous whine, and search, as some of us have done, his wallets. You will be astonished at the stores of beef and bread concealed beneath his rags. Don't blame him, however, because he whines on ;— he must reach his den at night, laden like a bee with plunder. You forget that a sound beating may await him if he returns empty-handed ; for he has to keep his mother in whisky, as well as his brothers and sisters in food. You have often tried to put down public begging, the dearest and most vicious way of maintaining the poor ; but till some such plan as ours is adopted, you never can. Not to speak of the beggars that prowl about our streets, hundreds of children set out every morning to levy their subsistence for the day, by calls at private houses. They beg when they may : they steal when they can. Is not such a system a disgrace to society ? Its evils are legion : and I can fancy no plan that goes so directly, and with such sure prom- ise of success, to the root of these evils, as that 44 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST : OR, I advocate. We say with Daniel Defoe, tliat begging is a sliame to any country : if the beg- gar is an unworthy object of charity, it is a shame that he should be alloived to beg ; if a worthy object of charity, it is a shame that he should be compelled to beg. We can again fancy some filled with fear lest such institutions should prove " a bounty on indolence, improvidence, and dissipation." We might answer, that the same objection may be urged against all charity ; and that unless we are prepared to run some risk, we shall never either obey the command of God to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, or yield to the better feelings of our nature. But let us look more directly at this objection. We are ready to meet it. Grant that the scheme were to act so in some cases on the parents ; still the good more than counterbalances the evil. You are employing the only means whereby the children can be saved from habits of " in- dolence, improvidence, and dissipation." Sup- pose a man already indolent, improvidtnt, and dissipated, to have four children ; without this PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 45 instituti(»n these grow up in their father's im- age. And what happens? Let the public observe what happens. The evil is multiplied fourfold. These four, again, become in course of time heads of families, — say each the parent of four children. And what happens now? The evil by this time is multiplied sixteenfold ; and so it rolls on and deepens, like the waters of the prophet's vision : first reaching the an- kle, then rising to the knee, then to the loins ; and by and by " it is a river that cannot be passed over — waters to swim in." How easily and successfully the child is trained to the vices of the man, we have had abundant evidence. We have heard a little child of eight years of age confess that he had been carried home in- toxicated ; and when he gaily and glibly told tliis story of early dissipation, it only called forth the merriment of the ragged urchins around. The sucking babe is drugged with opium ; and spirits are administered to allay the cravings of hunger. When examined on the state of her school, an excellent female teacher in this town acknowledged to us that 46 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST , OR, she had often been obliged from her own small salary to supply the wants of her hungry schol- ars. She had not the heart to offer the letters to a child who had got no breakfast ; and some days ago, smelling spirits from a fine lit tie girl, she drew from her this miserable con fission, that her only dinner had been the half of a biscuit and a little whisky. How early this hapless class are initiated in the use of spirits, came out the other day, to the aston- ishment of a friend of ours. While walking along the streets, she observed some boys and girls clustered like bees on and around a bar- rel. She asked them if it was a sugar barrel ; and on learning that it was a spirit one, she said, " You surely don't like whiskey ?" " Foi my i)airt, mem," says one, a little girl, — think- ing, perhaps, thereby to recommend herself, — " 'deed, mem, for my pairt I prefer the strong- ale." In sober sadness we ask, is it not worth running some risk to cure such evils — such a moral gangrene — as facts like these disclose ? But grant, again, that the dissipated father, because he sees his poor children fed, educated, PLEAS FOR ra(;c;ei) schools. 41 and disciplined at your expense, and not his own, is thereby encouraged in habits of vice. What happens ? If his children are saved by this institution (and, remember, they cannot be saved without it), at his death society suffers no longer. The evil ceases with himself ; and, instead of extending along the line of his pos- terity, and multiplying Avith their multiplica- tion, it is buried in the drunkard's grave. That any decent, sober, church-going, affec- tionate father, who is at present educating and honestly maintaining his family, will cease to work and take to drinking, because he will get the children whom he loves, and for whom he loves to labor, educated and fed in such a school as we suggest, along with the sweepings of the neighborhood, is an idea too absurd to be entertained by any reasonable man. It were waste of time, paper, and public patience, to answer an objection so utterly repugnant to human nature, and contrary to all experience. But I am not content simply to repel the objection, and show that such an institution will prove no bounty on indolence, improvi- 48 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, dence and dissipation. I believe the truth lies altogether the other way ; and having had more to do than many with the victims of these vices, I may be permitted to express my thor- ough conviction that the uncared-for and des- perate circumstances of the poor often prove strong temptations to the waste that leads to want. They are helpless because they are hopeless. It is after they get desperate that they get dissipated. Man thirsts for happi- ness ; and when everything in his neglected, and unpitied, and unhelped sorrows is calcu- lated to make him miserable, lie seeks visions of bliss in the day-dreams of intoxication ; and from the horrors that follow on excess he flies again to the arms of the enchanter. The in- toxicating cup brings, — what he never haw without it, — though a passing, still a present feeling of joy and comfort. Of course, I here speak of one who is a stranger to the consola- tions of religion, and the faith of him who said, " Though the fig-tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit in the vine, I will rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of my salva- PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 49 tion." It is easy for tliose wlio walk through the world rolled in flannels and cased in good broadcloth, — who sit down every day to a sumptuous, at least a comfortable dinner, — who have never had to sing a hungry child to sleep, nor to pawn tlieir Bible to buy bread, — it is very easy for such to wonder why the poor, who should be so careful, are often so wasteful. " What have they to do with drink ?" it is said ; " what temptation have they to drink ?" I pray them, — not that I de- fend the thing, but detest it, — but I pray them to hear the testimony of one who knew human nature well. The Laird* and Maggie are haggling about a fish bargain. " ' I'll gie them,' says Maggie, ' and — and — and — half a dozen o' partans to mak' the sauce, for three shillings and a dram.' " ' Half a crown then, Maggie, and a dram/ replies the Laird. " 'Aweel, your honor maun hae't your aiu gate, nae doubt ; but a dram's worth siller now, — the distilleries is no working.' ' Antiquary. 50 SEED-TIME AXD HARVEST ; OR, " 'And I hope they'll never work again in my time,' said Oldbuck. " 'Ay, ay, its easy for your honor, and the like o' you gentle folks, to say sae, that hae stouth and routh, and fire and fending, and meat and claith, and sit dry and canny by the fireside ; but an ye ^Yanted fire, and meat, and dry claise, and were deeing o' cauld, and had a sair heart, — whilk is warst ava, — wi' just tippence in your pouch, — wadna ye be glad to buy a dram wi't, to be eliding and claise, and a supper and heart's ease into the bargain, till the morn's morning ?' " There is a world of melancholy truth in thia description. I quote the above as the testimony of a man who had studied human nature : and I now quote what follows, as the inspired words of one whose Proverbs contain the most remark- able record of practical observation and every- day wisdom that the world contains. What says Solomon ? •' The destruction of the poor is their poverty.' He saw the connection be- tween desperate circumstances and dissipated PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 51 habits ; and elsewhere he says, " Let Mm drink to forget his poverty and remember his misery no more." The truth is, that a poor widow, with a babe at her breast, with three children at her side, and with only a sixpence a week allowed for each, to meet therewith the cost of food, fuel, house-rent, clothes, and education, is often driven to desperation. She struggles on for a while ; and, turning into temporary floats, by the help of the pawnbroker, this arti- cle and that, with her children hanging on her, slie keeps her head awhile to the stream. At length, having taken her last decent bit of fur- niture or dress to the pawn, she can contest it no longer. She loses heart. Seeing no hope, she seeks to drown in drink the consciousness of her misery, and is borne down the flood of ruin. If you cannot understand this tempta- tion, I will help you to do so. Look at that door, where an officer stands with a sword in one hand and a finger of the other on the trig- ger pf a pistol ! Who and what are these des- perate and haggard men that press in upon him ? A band of pirates who have boarded 52 SEED-TIME AXD HARVEST ; OR, his ship? Does he stand there to guard its freight of gold ? No, he guards its spirit-room. Six daj's ago the sea was calm, — hope was bright as heaven, — the good ship bounded over the billows, — and not a man of that band but he had only to say to him, "Go, and he goeth/' But the storm came, and the sails flew into rib- bons, and the masts went by the board, and the seams gaped to the sea, and the pumps were choked, and the vessel now lies water- logged. The men have strained their eyes for a sail on the wide round of waters, and have ceased to hope. The cry has been raised, " To the spirit-room !" and by this time they had drowned their sorrows in intoxication, but that that calm, determined man stands there, and having drawn a chalk-line across the pas- sage, assures them he vull cut down the first that attempts to cross. Far be it from me to say a word in defence of a crime which is the curse of our people, the shame of our country, and the blot of our churches. But don't deceive yourselves ; you will never starve men into sobriety. No ; but PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 53 you can starve many into drunkenness. One demon never cast out another ; althougli some seem to know as little of human nature as did tlie Jews of old, when they blasphemously said of our Divine Redeemer, " He casteth out dev- ils by Beelzebub, the prince of devils." I have seen and admired the efforts which the poor put forth when a ray of hope breaks through the gloom ; and, instead of aggravating the evils of dissipation, I am confident that the hope which such an institution would shed on the gloomy prospects of many a forlorn family, would help to charm and chase the demon away. It would make the widow's heart sing for joy. It would keep up her sinking head, — to see that now her poor, dear children had the prospect of being saved. It would have the same effect on her as the cry of " A sail !" has had on the mutinous crew, when, in that blessed sight and blessed sound, Hope boards the sinking ship. They return once more to their right mind, and now strain every nerve to keep themselves afloat. It cannot be denied that at this moment ma- 5* 54 SEED-TIME AXD HARVEST J OR, 11 V of our poor are miserably provided for : and, let me ask, how could an addition be so well or wisely made to their wretched pittance, as l3y securing for.their children such an education, as with the blessing of God, would train them up into honest and useful members of society ? The present system is vicious and defective. If the State or society is bound to maintain <;he children of the destitute, it is bound to do, what it does not, — educate them also. It pre- tends to do the first, — to a large extent it does not even pretend to do the second. By our scheme both would be done. If parents and oth- ers are inclined to abuse our diarity, and make it minister to their own vices, instead of theii children's maintenance, this scheme goes like a knife to the root of that evil. The children, — the innocent suflerers, those who, in the case of dissipated parents, become all the more ob- jects of Christian pity, — are, in the institu- tions we plead for, made sure of food, knowl- edge, habits of discipline and industry ; in short, they are placed beyond the reach of theiT parents' rapacity. The principle of our PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 55 scheme lies here : we feed in ordea- to educate ; just because we believe that if you seek the good of the individual child,' the benefit of so- ciety, and the glory of God, it is better to pay for the education of the boy, than for the pun- ishment of the man. We never could clearly see our way to the justice which punishes the child, in cases when it may be truly said, that he has less sinned than been sinned against. We are confident that the sentence which condemns is often wrung from reluctant judges. I cannot trans- fer to paper the touching description of a trial I heard from my friend Mr. Lothian, Procura- tor-Fiscal for the county of Edinburgh. On the occasion I allude to, he was the advocate of a boy who was charged with theft. The prisoner was a mere child. When he stood up, the crown of his head just reached the top of the bar. The crime was clearly proved ; and now came Mr. Lothian's time to shield him from the arm of the law. By the evidence of two or three policemen, he proved that that untaught, unschooled, untrained, uncared-for 56 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST* OR, infant, had a parent, by whose brutal, cruel usage he was compelled to steal. Then, caus- ing the poor child to be lifted up, and placed upon the bar, in sight of the wondering, pity- ing court, he turned round to the jury-box with this simple but telling appeal : — " Gentlemen," he said, " remember what I have proved ; look on that infant, and declare him guilty if you can." In such cases justice is perplexed what to do. It is not the heart only, but the head also, which is dissatisfied with the punishment. It is not on Mercy, but on Justice, that we call to interpose her shield, and protect the victim from the arm of the law. The guilty party is not at the bar ; and when the arm of Justice descends on a diild whom its country has neg- lected, abandoned to temptation, and left with- out protection to a parent's cruelty, she r^ minds us of the figure that stood some years ago over the courts of law in Londonderry. A heavy storm liad swept across the country, and, tearing away the scales, had left poor Justice nothing 1)ut lier sword. The law in such cases PLEAS FOR RAGKJED SCHOOLS. 57 may pronounce its sentence ; but humanity, rea- son, and religion, revolt against it. In Scot- land, if a man is charged with crime, the jury, in the case of his acquittal, may return either a verdict of not gmlfy, or not proven. Where there is a strong ground to suspect the party guilty, yet some slight flaw in the legal proof of his guilt,— tlie prisoner is acquitted under a verdict of not proven ; and if there are cases where the verdict is in truth, " guilty, hut not proven;^ — in tlie case of these unhappy chil- dren, who are suffering for the crimes of their parents and neglect of society, with what truth might this verdict be returned, '' proven, hut nx)t guilty r No offence can be committed but there is guilt somewhere. In the cases I refer to, how- ever, the guilty party i-s not the child at the bar. In the parents who have trained the child to crime, and in society, that has made no ef fective effort to save him, there are other two parties. It may not be easy for us to decide where the guilt lies, or in what proportion it is shared between them ; but we are thorough- 58 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, ly persuaded, that in the day of final judgment there will be found many an unhappy cliild \dio has stood at the bar of man, for wliose crimes other parties shall have to answer at the bar of God. We don't say that society can remedy every wrong ; nor do we enter- tain tlie Utopian expectation that, by these schools, or by any other means, crime can be banished from this guilty world ; but certainly institutions which will secure to these children a common and Christian education, and habits of discipline and industry, are rich in promise. We know that the returns of autumn fall al- ways short of the promise of summer, — that the fruit is never so abundant as the flower ; still, though not so Utopian as to expect that these schools will save all, we have good ground, both in reason and Scripture, to ex- pect that they will save many who seem other- wise doomed to ruin. To take the lowest of all ground, — to de- scend from the high considerations of human- ity, morality, and religion, look only at the pecuniary saving. To come down from the PLEAS FOR UAOGED SCHOOLS. 59 profit and loss of souls, to tlie profit and loss of money, — we claim for this scheme the public support. It may be laid down as an axiom, that the prevention of crime is cheaper tlian its punishment. Our schools will more than repay the outlay. Put out of view the retui^n which their work brings in, and which in Aber- deen amounts to a considerable item of the expense, and enter on the one side the expense of these schools, and on the other the saving to the country, through the diminution of crime, and, when the account is closed, we have a large balance in our favor. We pray those who are afraid of the probable expense of our Ragged Schools, to look at the actual expense of our criminal prosecutions. To confine our- selves to the case of convicts ;— does the reader .know that there are about three hundred of these annually transported from Scotland ? Do the inhabitants of Edinburgh know that our city furnishes about one hundred of these ? And that, overlooking tlie expense of previous convictions, and th^e money which the subjects of them cost when living by theft and beggary, 60 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, the actual expense of their conviction of the offence for which they are transported, and of the transportation itself, is not less than one hundred pounds a head ! For convicts belong- ing to this city we pay ten thousand pounds a year ; and for the single item of the trial and transportation of convicts, — who are, after all, but a handful of the other criminals, Scotland pays annually about thirty thousand pounds. Look at the following table, which Mr. Smith, governor of the prison, has kindly furnished. If sensible men only knew what enormous sums are paid for the punishment of crimes, they would, as a matter of mere economy, hail with pleasure a scheme so likely to prevent it. This table will convince many, that in doing so little towards the education and salvation of the unhappy outcasts at our doors, we have been for a long time, to use a vulgar but ex- pressive saying, " penny wise and pound fool- ish." PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 61 Statement of the Expenditure for Criminal Prosecu- tions^ Maintenance of Criminals, Sc, for Scotland^ for the year 1846. Expense of Prosecutions carried on in name and by authority of the Lord Advocate, . £13,775 Sums required by the Sheriffs in Scotland to settle accounts for prosecutions . . . 49,000 Expenditure under the -Prison Boards of the several counties in Scotland, for mainte- nance, &c., of prisoners .... 43,366 Proportion effeiring to Scotland for convicts sent to MiUbank 3,932 Proportion effeiring to Scotland for convicts sent abroad 28,830 Proportion effeiring to Scotland for convicts at home, Bermuda, Gibraltar, &:c. . , 7,193 Expense of Prison Board in Scotland . 1,740 Prison Inspector's allowances, including trav- elling charges 1,200 Justiciary Court and Crown Agent for station- ery, printing, &c 1,009 £150,045 In addition to the above, vast expenses are incurred in the punishment of crime, the amount of whicli we cannot specify, such as, — Expense of Court of Justiciary, including judges' sala- ries, travelling expenses on circuits, macers, &c. ; salaries of the Lord Advocate, Solicitor- 6 62 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, General, and Depute- Advocates; Crown Agenf 8 salary, including assistants, &g. The following should also be included : — Expenditure by the several counties, cities, and burghs in Scotland, in supporting their respec- tive police establishments ; expenditure by ditto in precognitions and summary prosecutions in criminal cases, not reported by the Sheriff to the Lord Advocate ; one year's interest on capital expended in building prisons, lock-up houses, &c. Some one has said, " How cheap is charity !" This beautiful saying might form the motto of our Industrial Schools. No man, we think, can read this table of expense without the con- viction being borne in on his mind, that it in high time to be doing more in the way of pre- venting, that we may have to do less in the way of punishing, crime. Nothing more strongly recommends the scheme to me than the fact, that it reconciles two great and good philanthropists, who seem to be opposed to each other, — both lovers of the poor, both earnest for their good, — both PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 63 proposing for the same end what appear differ- ent plans, — and yet both right. AVith Dr. Chahuers we have always thought that it was through moral and Christian machinery that our degraded and deep-sunk population were to be raised. For their permanent good we have no faith in any other scheme. With Dr. Alison, again, we always thought that the maintenance of tlie poor was miserably inade- quate to their wants ; and that this stood as a barrier between them and the moral influences by which Dr. Chalmers would ameliorate and permanently improve their character. We agreed with both, and confess that we could never very well see how they seemed to dis agree with each other. In, as it were, th( presence of such men, I speak on this subject with unfeigned humility. The two schemes may go hand in hand. Nay, more, like the Siamese twins, the presence of the one should insure the company of the other. Our scheme furnishes a common walk for both these distin- guished philanthropists. Under the self-same roof the temporal and the moral wants of our 3 64 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, forlorn poor are provided for : and both these doctors meet harmoniously in our school-room. Dr. Alison comes in with his bread, — Dr. Chal- mers with his Bible : here is food for the body, — there for the soul. Dr. Alison's bread can- not be abused, — Dr. Chalmer's Bible is heard by willing ears ; and so this scheme, meeting the views of both, lays its hands upon them both. We have been dealing with objectors and objections, if any such there be. If any man into whose hands this appeal may fall is ready to toss it aside as an effort made on behalf of those who are not worth saving, either for this world or the next, let him read the following passage : — " ' Push it aside, and let it float down the stream/ said the captain of a steamboat on a small western river, as we came upon a huge log lying crosswise in the channel, near to a large town at which we were about to stop. The headway of the boat had already been checked, and with a trifling effort the position of the log was changed, and it moved onward PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 65 toward the Mississippi. On it went, perhaps to annoy others, as it had annoyed us, — to lodge here and there, nntil it becomes so water- soaken, that the heavier end will sink into a sand-bar, and the lighter project upward, thus forming a ' sawyer,' or a ' snag.' It would have taken a little more effort to cast it high upon the land ; but no one on board appeared to think of doing that, or anything else, save getting rid of it as easily as possible, for it had not yet become a formidahle evil. By and by, if a steamboat should be going down the river, and strike against it, causing a loss of thousands of dollars, if not of life, Jmndreds will ask the old question, if something cannol be done to remedy such evils, without stopping to inquire whether they cannot be prevented. " Now, this is the way in which some of us work, who profess to have a better knowledge than that which belongs to the world. We forget that old proverb, that an ounce of pre- vention is better than a pound of cure — that that is the truest wisdom which advises the overcoming of the beginnings of evil. It may 6* 66 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, cost US less seeming labor to ' push aside ' the boy who stands at the corner of the street on the Sabbatli, with an oath on his lips, than to put forth a little extra effort to get him into a Sabbath-scliool. But he is not yet Si formidable evil to society, and so is left to float down with the current of vice — to continue his growth in sin, and reach his manhood steeped in habits of evil, and fixed in a position that may work the ruin of more than one soul." Yes, it is easy to push aside the poor boy iu the street, with a harsh and unfeeling refusal, saying to your neighbor, " These are the pests of the city." Call them, if you choose, the rubbish of society ; only let us say, that there are jewels among that rubbish, which would richly repay the expense of searching. Bedded in their dark and dismal abodes, precious stones lie there, which only wait to be dug out and polished, to shine, first on earth, and hereafter and for ever in a Redeemer's crown. Dr. Chalmers has eloquently expounded, and ofien })ractically exemplified, the principle, that v\^hen convinced ourselves, we ought to begin PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 67 at once ; nor delay action until all are ready to move. And in drawing these remarks to a close, we have to mention, that, acting on this principle, an Interim Committee of gentlemen have secured premises, and taketi steps for the speedy opening of a Ragged School in this city. We cast ourselves with perfect faith on God, and the support of a humane and Christian public. We hope to see the matter taken up on a large and general plan, worthy of its merits and worthy of the metropolis of Scot- land. In the meantime, we are content to be the mere pioneers of this movement ; and for such a noble experiment we trust to be pro- vided with funds amply sufficient for the ex- penses we incur. For such assistance we can promise a richer return tlian our thanks — even the blessing of those that are ready to perish. In closing this appeal, I have only further to add, th^ we are all but confident of public support. We have brought forth revelations of the state of the poor which Avill be new to many. If any of these read tliis appeal, their Ignorance canuot hencefortli excuse their apa- 68 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST. thy. Such schools, in smaller or greater num- bers, are needed in many towns. M e hope to see Christians of all denominations, and poli- ticians of all parties, throughout the country, as well as in Edinburgh, putting forth cordial and combined efforts to establish and extend Ragged Schools. Though, for the sake of the perishing, we may regret the defects and inade- quacy of this appeal, we will never regret that it has been made. It were better far in such a case to fail, than to stand idly by and see the castaway perish. If the drowning man sink before we reach him, it will be some conso- lation to reflect that we did our best to save him. Though we bore home but the dead body of her boy, we should earn a mother's gratitude and blessing. We had tried to save him : and from that blessed One who made Himself poor that He might make us rich — who was full of compassion, kind and patient to the bad — and who hath set us an example that we should fol- low his steps — we shall at least earn this ap- proving sentence, '' They have done what they could." SECOND PLEA. "Tbey perish in the open streets— beneath the pitilesa pelting- of the stoim— ofcold, and hunger, and broken hearts."' Bishop Horsley. DURING the noontide heat of an African i^un, the missionary sat with his family in the shadow of their wag#n. A widely-spread solitude extended far away and all around them. The sun glowed from a cloudless sky on the scorching sand ; the lion lay panting in his shady den; the wild beasts had sought, some the cooling river, some the depths of the dark forest ; and all around the travellers there was neither sound, nor sight of life. Nature lay exhausted ; and had dropped asleep like an infant in the heat of day. An object moving in the distance, and approacliing his encamp- ment, at length attracted the eye of the mis- sionai-y. By and by a boy stood before him, in the grace of savage freedom, scantily attired (69) YO SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, in the skin of a wild beast, wlii eh himg from his bronzed and naked shoulders. He was accompanied by a beautiful springbok, which licked his hand, and trotted lovingly at his heels. The child of parents who had died or deserted him, without brother or sister, kindred, clan, or* companion, save the gentle deer — he told his story in a single sentence. Fixing his large black eyes on the man of God, he stretched out his naked arm, and said, " Stran- ger, I am alone in the world." The appeal was touching, tender, irresistible. Let us hope it will prove as successful with kind hearts at home. The solitude of a crowd is the most painful of all. We have sat on the shore of a lonely bay, shut out from the green earth by its gigan- tic walls, with nought but the blue sea before us, and the blue sky above us ; on the sands no print of human foot, nor white sail on the waters. At the close of day we have stood in a lone Highland glen, where tlie mountains, crowned by frowning crags, rose to heaven, and the lake, undisturbed by a rip])le, lay PLE.VS FOIT RAGfJEP SCHOOLS. 71 asleep at their feet — shining in the last glei.in of twilight, like molten silver at tlic bottom of a coal-black crucible. In such scenes we have felt much alone ; but never so much so as, in early youth, on descending from a coach on a winter evening, in the heart of London, where amid the glare of liglits, and the roar of busi ness, and Juirrying crowds, we knew no one The Solitary of a City is a lonesome being ; and such, in the most bitter circumstances, ari many on behalf of whom I venture once m.ore to address a humane and Christian public. The appeal which we are now about to make is chiefly addressed to those who have as yet lent nothing to the Ragged Schools. We em- ploy the word lent designedly and deliberately. It has not slid in by a slip of the pen, but is used in virtue of the Divine enunciation, " He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord, and He will repay." On that security we would borrow your money, while reminding you of these other words of Divine benevolence. '* Hide not thyself from thine own flesh ;" " Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that 72 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, would borrow of thee turn not thou away." The money which is lavished on sturdy beggars, on the wasteful slaves of vice, on the reckless and improvident, you have no right to expect repayment of. These are not the poor. On the contrary, they plunder the poor, and prey on poverty ; and, hardening men's hearts by their frauds, improvidence, crimes, and detected impostures, against the claims of real poverty, they deserve not charity, but chastisement. It is a scandal and a shame that such devouring locusts are permitted to infest our city, and swarm in its streets. The vices of a system which the police strangely tolerate, and oui charity unwisely maintains, are visible in the blotched and brazened features of those thriving solicitors. The very breath with which they whine for charity smells of the dram-shop. It poisons and pollutes the air ; and those who contribute to foster this profligate system have no claim to the blessing, " Blessed is he that wisely doth The poor man's case consider." PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 73 If ov I- Ragged Schools should be under the paiufnl necessity of drawing in their expendi- myf\ and of contracting, instead of extending tlic sphere of their operations, it will be lament- able. With thousands yearly wasted on the maintenance of a horde of plunderers, the con- dition of the body politic shall be as unhealthy as is that of the body corporeal, when its blood and juices go to nourish an enormous wen, which exhausts the strength, creates deformity, and swells at the expense of shrunken and wasted limbs. Should this plea fall into the hands of any whose first impulse is to fling it aside, with such a growl as that wherewith some fat and well-fed mastiff salutes the timid, lank, hungry, houseless cur wlio presumes to approach his well-heaped trencher, we beseech their patience. As confident in the goodness as we are earnest for the success of our cause, with the brave old Roman we say, " Strike, but hear me !" There are schemes of benevolence which la- bor under a serious disadvantage. The objects they seek to benefit, and the benefits they sue- 74 SEED-TIME AXD HARVEST ; OR, ceed in bestowing on them, are out of sight ; remote, and far away. The Christianizing ot* the heathen, and emancipation of the slave, achieved amid foreign scenes, and on fields from which we are separated by thousands of miles, are objects to us, not of sight, but of faith. We neither saw the negro writhing un- der the lash, nor, when his chains were struck off, bound from the earth to dance and sing, and shout in a delirium of joy. We could neither see the Indian leap in hideous paint and with whirling tomahawk into the circle of the war-dance, nor, when converted, hurl his tomahawk into the bosom only of the lake, and sit down as a child of peace at the feet of Jesus, " clothed, and in his right mind." To move the feelings and touch the hearts of men till waters flowed as to the rod of Moses from the flinty rock, and money poured into the Treasury of Liberty or Religion, it was neces- sary to call in the orator and the poet, to ad- dress the imagination through eloquent and pathetic pictures of the sorrows of humanity. Fortunately, at least for our cause, our streets PLEAS FOR RAGCED SCHOOLS. 75 swann with living evidences of the need o^ these schools. Their advocates are before us, in all the pathos of misery, begging, shivering, starving in the streets. What picture could I paint half so touching as the living spectacle ! '^ Famine is in their cheeks ; Need and oppression staring in their looks ; Contempt and beggary hang upon their back's." I may state, for the information of those who have not read the first " Plea," that, while en- gaged in writing it, I had statistics showing that there were at least one thousand children growing up among us in total ignorance, and doomed to a career of crime. Their only hope of being saved lay in the opening of an ade- quate number of Ragged Schools. Now since that " Plea " was published much good has been done ; but how much remains undone ! The numbers attending our own school and others are as follows : — Rev. Messrs. Paul and Veitch's Ragged School 68 United Industrial School . . . .100 The Original Ragged School (our own) . . 210 378 76 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, Assuming that there are no more than one thousand outcast children in Edinburgh, then we leave more than the half to perish. At that estimate, we bring off little more than a third from the wreck ; and if, as is probable, the actual number is not one, but two thousand, there are then more than fifteen hundred chil- dren here who are growing up to disturb and disgrace society, to entail on the country an enormous expense, and to supply with their hopeless and unhappy victims our Police Office and prisons. How hard and melancholy their lot ! These furnish fifteen hundred arguments for our schools. While one poor child remains unsaved, so long as one is left hanging on the wreck over the devouring sea, I have ground, firm as the truth of God, on which to appeal both to your justice and generosity. So much for numbers. Let me next present some idea of the state in which these children are when found. The following cases are cop- ied from our books or the record of the Police Office : Case 1. " Jolin H , seven years of age, PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 77 has been in the habit of sleeping in stairs, or wherever he can find shelter, and was sent to onr school from the Police Office, where he was well known as a juvenile mendicant. He deserted school thirteen times ; and when our teachers despaired of breaking in this young savage, a sister of about eight years old ap- peared at the school, as wild, wandering, and wayward as liimself. The change on these children is such, that, instead of being a pest, they are now a pleasure." Case 2. "Anne B , thirteen years of age, was sent here from the Police Court, having been convicted of public begging. She could read none, having never been at any school. Her mother is dead, and her father has long since deserted her. Her uncle resides in town, goes to no cliurch, but keeps a low lodging- house in a mean locality. There are twelve beds in his house, and each of these is gener- ally occupied by three or four persons. She had to carry drink to the lodgers at all hours of the night ; and her fortune was, sometimes to get a bed for herself, — sometimes none at 7* 76 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, all. riiis poor girl, so nigh to destruction, has .een rescued from circumstances which wou.d have speedily ended in her ruin. She has found a Saviour and an asylum in our Rag- ged School ; and now, sheltered at night be- neath the roof of a decent widow, she is happy, contented, and willing to do well." Case 3. " Jane T , about eleven years of age. She has been wandering about the town, begging in ordinary, and stealing when she could ; sleeping on stairs, or wherever a place could be found for her head to lie on, along with her brother, who is such another outcast and wanderer. She was sent to our School from the Police Court. Their case, as well as many others, proves the early power of evil habits, and how difficult it is to tame these Arabs of the city. The day after being received into the school they both de- serted. There was reason to believe that the boy had committed some crime, for which he had been thrown into jail. The girl was sought for : the lost sheep was found ; and, by her excellent beliavior, she now promises, with PLEAS FOR llAGCED SCHOOLS. 79 God's blessing, to reward all the care and kindness slie has received." Case 4. " The son of Eliza J , residing . . . . does not know his age ; supposed about eight or nine ; father dead ; a smart, ac- tive child ; and has been singing on the street and jumping Jim Crow for a considerable pe- riod past. He was formerly at the Industrial School, but was taken therefrom by his mother, who found it more profitable to have him sing- ing and begging than being at school. Bailie Stott requests that he be again received ; and should his mother try to take him again away, the police will do all they can to get at her. (Signed) Jas. Morham." " Police Court." Cctse 5. " P. G was brought up as a va- grant. He confesses he had not been at school for two years, and frankly admits that he has been all that time going about stealing. He expresses his willingness to go to school. The family is said to be a bad one. The case is continued for a month. In case he absconds, 80 SEED-TIME AxVD HARVEST ; OR, he will require to be watched, as he confessea to have had a hand in many thefts. (Signed) Andrew Jameson." In regard to this boy, — sent to our school by the Sheriff-substitute, Mr. Jameson,* one of its warmest and most enlightened friends, and we may add that the superintendent certifies his regular attendance, and the great satisfaction upon the whole that he has given. These examples may convey to the reader some idea of the hard and melancholy lot of these poor children. The whole country has been agitated by dis- cussions on education ; and debate has waxed warm and high on the question, whether the instruction of the people belongs to the Gov- ernment, or should be left to voluntary enter- prise. Tliere are two sides to that question, — there is but one side'here. If these wretch- ed, neglected, and unhappy outcasts are to be '■' In the Appendix the reader will find a valuable letter from ;\Ir. Jameson, where he bears his testimony to the operation of the Industrial Schools. PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 81 taugbt and saved, there is no room to deny, or even doubt, the indispensable necessity of Rag- ged Schools. Nowhere else can the objects of our charity find a school and an asylum. Theirs is a hard and woeful lot ; nor could it perhaps be better set forth than in the follow- ing table, descriptive of the cases of the chil- dren who have attended our school during the last twelvemonth : — Above Eip;ht Years of Age. Infants. Total. Boys. 23 Girls. Fatherless, with drunken Moth's 18 23 63 Motherless, " '* Fathers 22 18 17 57 Both Parents utterly worthless 30 26 21 77 Certainly known as Children of Thieves • 23 35 28 48 18 47 G9 130 T?plipvpd to be 80 Who have been Beggars 88 79 65 232 Who have been in Jail 11 7 18 Who have been in Police Office 32 19 51 1 Who were homeless 15 1 12 27 82 These victims of parents' damnable and damning vices suffer through sins not their own. Look at that creature whose shivering limbs, and pinched and hungry features, appeal to your tenderest feelings ! Are you to follow the footsteps of the good Samaritan, or, pass- ing by on the other side, leave that hapless child to its miserable doom ? Little do many know what misery, what bitter hours, what biting cold, what brutal usage are summed up in its short experience. This elf-like creature, whose infancy was neither cradled nor ca- ressed, that stands here with naked limbs, and tangled locks, and " uncouth features, meagre, pale and wild," has suffered day by day the most brutal usage, — usage such as, if inflicted on child, brother, sister of yours or mine, woulcj stir the very deptlis of passion, and make our eyes flash with angry fires ! What mothers they have ! One night the street along which I walked was suddenly filled with loud pierc- ing shrieks. A poor starved-like boy, whose mother was going with her paramour to drink, had followed her, remonstrating with PLEAS FOU RA(^GED SCHOOLS. 83 her. She had turned on him like a wild beast. I fouiid her beating him most savagely. And I well remember with what rage, when I had thrust myself in between them, and flung her back, she turned on me to justify her brutal- ity ; alleging that, as the child was hers, she might treat him as she liked. To the children of such mothers,— or monsters rather,— our school opens wide the gates of a most welcome and blessed asylum. To leave them to the care of their parents, is to doom them to certain ruin. Are they to be taught industry by idleness ? honesty by tiieft? sobriety by drunkenness? purity by pollution? decorum by indecency? the fear and the love of God by those of whom the Scrip- ture says, " God is not in all their thoughts ?" Those only who, like ourselves, have gone down into the dark abodes of poverty and crime, of fever, pestilence, and pollution, can form a sufiftciently strong conviction of the utter folly of leaving these children to no oth- er than parental care. In their ignorance some may wonder at our anxiety to pluck the 84 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST: OR, child from the arms of her whom nature teach* es to love it. But vice turns a mother's heart to stone, and works a metamorphosis passing any sung by Ovid. How altered in the poet's hands does Lycaon grow ! " The tyrant, in affright, for shelter gains The neighboring fields, and scours along the plains. Howhng he fled, and fain he would have spoke ; But human voice his brutal tongue forsook. About his lips the gathered foam he churns, And, breathing slaughter, still v^^ith rage he burns; But on the bleating flock -his fury turns : His mantle, now his hide, with rugged hairs, Cleaves to his back ; a famished face he bears. His arms descend, his shoulders sink away, To multiply his legs, for chance of prey. He grows a wolf; his hoariness remains. And the same rage in other members reigns.*' The poet turns Lycaon into a ravenous wolf ; Ijut, as George Whitefield was wont to say, and thunder over awe-struck assemblies, sin has turned man into a monstrous compound of half-brute half-devil. There can be no greater folly than to ti'ust the drunkard's children to the drunkard's care. If habits of dissipation be once thorouglily PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 85 rooted, character forfeited, and the powers of the mind prostrated by long indulgence, vain is the struggle which domestic love, religious knowledge, and even an anticipation of the dreadful issue, maintain with this master vice. To illustrate this, and to rouse a drowsy pub- lic, to awaken virtuous indignation against the drinking-shops that are strewed, like some fatal shore, with wrecks of families, and for- tune, and fame, and character, — let me select from many such cases, one which has left an indelible impression on my memory. On the forenoon of a winter day, some seven years ago, I received a note, urging me, if I wished to save his life, to hurry to the abode of the writer. I knew him. He was a man of talent ; and had an uncommon knowledge of Scripture. After seeing a great deal of the world, he had returned to spend his days at home, possessed of what, with a little industry on his part, would amply suffice for the main- tenance of his family. A prudent, tidy, sober, sensible wife, with two or three fine children, made up his domestic circle; and a sweeter, 8 86 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR, happier home there might not have been in all Edinburgh. But what availed these ? He was a drunkard. On my first visit to this district, I found him a woe-begone wretch ; sitting idle and gloomy in a foul apartment ; his wife heart-broken ; and he himself the terror of his children, who, clad in rags, waited on no min- istry, and went to no school. In course of time a very remarkable change was wrought on his home and habits. The wilderness had become an Eden, and the desert a garden of the Lord ! And it was a pleasant sight to set' that man on the Sabbath day, — his family be side him, roses blooming on their cheeks, and their rags exchanged for com^rtable and be coming attire. I have often looked at hin with wonder as he sat before the pulpit, drink ing in the truth, his glistening eye fixed upon the speaker. His home was now comfortably and fully furnished. Cheap and simple orna- ments adorned its once naked walls. It was impossible to stand on the clean-swept hearth- stone, before the bright fire, amid so many comforts, with such a happy, cheerful family PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 87 around, and not cling fondly to the hope that this was " a brand plucked from the burning." Such had been the state of matters before I received the ominous note. It was with dark forebodings that I hastened to the house, and climbed live flights of stairs to the room where drunkenness and poverty had driven this man, and where, though brighter days had dawned, he still resided. His poor Avife, " her eyes con- sumed with grief," with three children clinging in terror to their mother, was the first sight that met me. She put her finger on her lips, and led me into a neighbor's room. There I heard all. He had been mad with drink foi some days. Trembling for her own and hei children's lives, she had had to seek an asylum beneath a kind neighbor's roof. The door of his room was bolted ; but he opened it when 1 knocked and announced my name. What a scene was there ! No furniture ; no bedding ; the fire quenched on the hearth ; the very grate removed from the cold black chimney, — all sold for drink. And amid this desolation stood the man himself, tliat cold winter day, without coat, ss or vest, or stockings, or shoes, — the sleeve ol his shirt rolled up to the shoulder, and a large knife in his hand.. He had resolved on suicide, but stood uncertain how to leave the scene : whether by the knife ; or by the window thrown up for the dreadful leap ; or by a rope and noose, that hung ominous and frightful from a post of the bedstead. I dealt as I best could with this guilty and troubled spirit. His con- science was again awakened. Affection to his wife and children resumed its sway. He threw himself at her feet : he kissed his little ones, and accused himself of being the veriest, vilest wretch on earth ! The scene, which would have melted a heart of stone, afforded me some hope that, from this new struggle with an old enemy, he might at length come off victorious, — earn- ing the blessings of his family, and the praise of Him who hath said, " He that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." Alas! his goodness was like the morning cloud : and by and by he abandoned his liome, adding another to the vast number of misera- ble families which have been deserted by their PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 8V) natural protectors. In time he was forgotten, as a dead man out of mind. Yet we met aaain. Engaged, one day, in visiting in the Grass- market, I entered a low lodging-house, kept by an Irishwoman. While conversing with some of her countrymen, the mistress said that a lodger in the back room wished to see me. She lighted a candle ; and, stooping, followed by me, she entered a low, long, dark, narrow apartment, with beds, as thick as they could be placed, ranged on each side. She stopped by a bed, on which, under a dirty coverlet that was drawn over the face, lay a human form, like a corpse beneath its shroud. A heavy sigh was the only answer returned to the ques- tion. Who wishes to see me ? The face was at length uncovered ; and the light of the candle fell on the haggard, death-stamped features of the wretched man who once seemed to have been saved. I was shocked at the sight ; and shall never forget his piteous tone and despair- ing look, as he asked, " Is it possible, sir, after all, I can be saved ? " There are many such unhappy men an.h pitiless indifference. They may U\\ us, in self-defence, that the mother is a wicked and worthless profligate. We cannot take that for granted. We have seen crime rustling In silks ; a saint expiring on a bed of rags ; u.>d innocence begging bread on our streets. What scenes of virtu- ous sorrow and unpitied suffering could many of these old, lofty, begrimed tenements reveal! 92 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OB, "Where the palhd mother croons to rest The withering babe at her milkless breast ; She, wakeful, views the risen day Break gladness o'er her home's decay, And God's blest light a ghastly glare Of grey and deathy dimness there." But grant the mother's profligacy. So much the worse for her children ; and so much the greater, we add, the need of your interference. The apology which you make for your neglect, is an aggravation of its guilt. The charity too often wasted on drunken mothers, we would apply to the benefit of their innocent offspring. And in proposing to in- terfere between the rapacity of the parent and the ruin of the child, we do nothing but what others elsewhere have proposed, and all men have commended. Turn your eyes on India ! As if our humanity had grown warm beneath its sunny skies, we interposed the authority of British law to abolish infanticide. Though the sacrifice was on their part an act of devotion, we prevented Indian mothers casting their fe- male infants into the stream. Here, as well as there, liberty should be restrained wheD PLEAS FOR RAOOEI) SCHOOLS 93 it passes into licentiousness ; and, wherever tliey are flagrantly abused, parental, as well as elective rights, should be withdrawn. It was a noble act to put down infanticide in India ; yet why tolerate at home the horrid crimes committed by parents against their children? It looks as if our humanity was affected, like a thermometer, by climate, rising and falling with the temperature of the zones, — glowing be- neath the sun of India, but cold and chill here as the fogs of our northern skies. Does the reader ask, What can I do ? Fol- low, we answer, where a princess leads. The castaway is before you, adrift, like Moses, on the stream : we stand anxiously by the river side, watching the result of this appeal. Ready to undertake the welcome task, we wait for you to say, with Pharaoh's daughter, " Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages." We implore you to follow a yet higher example, and attempt an " Imitation of Christ" Himself. I have often thought, had He walked our streets, how Jesus Christ would have pitied these unhappy chil- 94 SEED-TIME AXD HARVEST; OR, (Iren ! Who can doubt it, that remembers his parable of the good shepherd, who left the ninety and nine, to seek the lost sheep in the wilderness ; nor abandoned the search till he could return, rejoicing that the lost was found ? With such an example, who should refuse their help ? Give as you are able ; but give. Then, though still with sorrow, you can without shame look a helpless outcast in the face. You have done what you could. It may encourage many to come to our help, as it has encouraged our Committee to contin- ue their exertions, to show how the tree, though planted but two short years ago, is not only budding, and blossoming, but, like Aaron's rod, is also bearing fruit. Perhaps the most satisfactory evidence that I can give of this will be found in the follow- ing extract. Mr. Grimmond, our superintend- ent, writes, — '' There are four kinds of fruit resulting from the establishment of these schools : — '' 1.9^, That reaped by the puljlic. in being re- lieved from the molestation and importunity PLEAS FOR RACxGED SCHOOLS. 9o of swarms of juvenile beggars. Under tlii? head I have only to say, that people, in talking to me about these schools, have often remarked that, since their institution, the streets are much more clear of that class. " 2d, The benefits enjoyed by the children, who have been lifted out of misery, and arc now comfortable and happy. Any one may mark the difference between the juvenile beg- o-ar of the street and the child of the Ragged Scliool ; the lazy l)eggar is turned into a busy scholar ; the pale, sunken cheek is now fat and blooming ; and the miserable, sickly, house- less, uncared-for child is enjoying the blessings of Christianity. " 3(/, The advantages gained by those chil- dren who have left these schools and entered on some useful employment, who are now doing well. " 4,th, The fruit reaped by those who seem to have received, not only religious knowledge, but serious impressions, in our schools. Under this head I can confidently say, that during the Bible lesson these children are more atten- OR, tive than any I have elsewhere seen. The death-beds of some have furnished us with good ground for believing that, from these schools, and through means of them, some have gone to be with Jesus, and that some of your Ragged School fruits are already being reaped in glory. One poor little child, Betty M'K , ten years of age, was blessed, I be- lieve, through the Bible lesson she had carried home, to lead her poor ignorant father to a knowledge of the truth. He died in the In- firmary ; and, soon after, she fell into a fatal decline. She never fretted, having learnt to bear with patience all that God laid on her. In answer to my question, she said, ' I am not afraid to die ;' and, as the reason of her confi- dence, added, ' because Jesus loves me.' On the evening before her death, her tongue, whicli had been tied for three days, was unloosed, and for some seven minutes she engaged in fervent- prayer, saying, as she stood on the brink of eternity, that she thought it far better to de- part and be with Jesus ; and the Doctor and otiier Christian friends who visited her had no PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 97 doubt that she was a lamb gathered into the fold. Some other cases, not less promising, I could give, but abstain, only adding, that the nmnner in which their parents or guardians de- scribe to us how they used to sing with delight the hymns they had learned in the school, and tell about Jesus and heaven, showed that they at least wished to be there. I have no doubt that some of their parents have been greatly benefited in this way ; and I could take you to this one, and that one, and another one, who have become church attenders since their chil- dren came to the Ragged School ; while oth- ers of them come and hear the Bible lesson in school along with their children on the Sab- bath day. "William Grimmond." We ask the reader's attention also to the following table : — 98 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, Number registered this year from date 26th March, 1848 Remaining on Roll Of the 113 who have left,— Left Town Deserted, being determined Beggars Sent to other Parishes, on which ) they had a claim j Removed by deatl (4 of Cholera) Gone to other Schools, their con- ) dition being improved j Found employment Of those at present in School, — Taught to read the Bible Taught to write Boys. 135 89 llnfanls Girls. I under Eight. 102 69 54 Removed. , . . 7 6 0 IG 0 8 6 7 5 6 4 0 3 7 6 24 17 24 25 16 16 Total 325 212 113 16 14 13 10 19 41 65 34* • For other valuable statistics, and some weighty and important re- flections which they have suggested, we refer the reader to a letto.' In the Appendix, from Dr. Boll, one of our valuable Socrctarios. PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 09 In regard to our machinery and manage- ment I may state that we have three schools, —one school for boys, another for girls, and a third, which may properly be called the Infant School. All the scholars leave their homes or lodging-houses, or our own dormitories, to assemble at seven o'clock in the morning in summer, and eight in winter. The first exer- cise they go through is a purifying one. They doff their rags to march for some three yards under the invigorating, cleansing shower of a large bath. Attiring themselves in the school dress, they work an hour, and then (grace be- ing said by one of the children) sit down to a comfortable breakfast of oatmeal porridge. With a reasonable allowance for play, so many hours are spent in industrial occupations, — so many in receiving instruction, both secu- lar and religious.* We seek to communicate a sound and saving knowledge of the Bible, because we believe that, while true of all chil- dren, it is emphatically and especially true of * This will be found fully detailed in a table inserted in the Appendix. 100 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, these, that " the fear of God is the begin- ning of wisdom." They dine at mid-day ; and after another diet of oatmeal porridge about seven o'clock in the evening, they are sent away happy — to cheer sometimes even their dark and dreary homes, with lessons of piety and hymns of praise learned in our school. The discipline, also, of our school is one of its most interesting features. Our teacher, Mr. Gibb, has achieved the most singular suc- cess in breaking in these children, ameliora- ting their dispositions, and humanizing their wliole character and habits. We remarked in our first " Plea," that they were not to be moved by hard words and harder blows, being too much accustomed to these at home, and having " learn to be as indifferent to them as the smith's dog to the shower of sparks." From the beginning, we put our faitli in kindness. It has been tried, and not found wanting. Those that would have bristled up before a harsh word or blow, have become soft and pliant in her tender hand ; and care has always been taken in the few cases of corporeal pim- PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 101 ishment to administer it witli the smallest pos- sible measure of pain, and the largest possible measure of kindness. The following extract of a letter received from a lady, will form a suitable introduction to some details belonging to school discipline. " I went to the Ragged School to-day with some friends, and spent two hours among tlie boys, much to our amusement, and admiration both of them and Mr. Gibb. We were most fortunate in our choice of a day for our visit, for several interesting events occurred. A de- serter was brought back, and regularly put upon trial ; and truly it was as good as a play any day, to hear the examinations, as conducted by Mr. Gibb in presence of the assembled school, and the queer answers and odd reasons for running away, tendered by the culprit in his own defence. After he was heard for him- self, every boy who in conscience thought he had done wrong was desired to hold up liis right hand. The verdict was unanimous ; and it was Guilty. And then came the question of punishment. This was speedily decided by 9* 102 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR, a special jury, selected from his own class, who retired to consult, and who returned in a few minutes, and, through their dux as chancellor, announced a sentence of twelve palmies. Mr. Gibb begged us to remain and see the dose ad- ministered. Curiosity, and a lively interest in the scene, overcame the scruples of our ten- derer feelings ; and we were amply repaid by hearing the judicious, tender, and Christian admonition with which Mr. Gibb accompanied the correction, — explaining, both to the culprit and school, that punishment was administered on the well-known principle of these schools, — the motto of your ' Plea,' — ' Prevention is betr ter than cure.' " Take the case of S . This boy had de- serted the school to resume his predatory and begging habits. Mr. Gibb had desired some of those who lived in his neighborhood to get hold of him, and bring him back. Though they went to his house next morning, and re- peated their visits for two or three successive days, they never got sight of him. " The nest w as flown." To Mr. Gibb's surprise, however, PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 103 one morning he saw S sitting in the work- room, under a strong guard ; a sentinel on each side of him, and one in front. At his home, by six o'clock in the morning, the boys had found him sitting beside the fire-place in his shirt. In vain, though backed by an elder brother, they told him to dress, and come along. On the appearance of force, he flew to the weapon, which, according to Sir Walter Scott, proved so effective in the hands of a famous Bailie, and, drawing a red-hot poker from the fire, was like to put them all to flight. Two of them at length got hold of him, the third following with his clothes ; and, doubtless, he had been carried in this state to school, but that his cries reached the ears of a policeman, who persuaded these rough valets de chamhre to find him a dressing-room in a common stair. Mr. Gibb found him fertile in excuses for his bad behavior. Finding none of them avail him, with the cunning of his class, he invented one' on the spur of the moment, which he sup- posed would awaken the interest of some pious ladies then visiting the school. " I dinna like," 104 SEED-TIME AXD HARVEST ; OR, said the rogue, " to come to this scule. I want to gang to a .scule whar I'll get mair learnin', and learn to read tlie Bible. ''^ At this moment a gentleman entered connected with one of the Ragged Schools in London ; and wishing to know how we managed disorderly boys, he was told that we had then a case in hand, and, if he pleased, he might stop and see the result. A jury of the school decided against S ; and when the sentence was about to be admin- istered, the boys were asked if any of them would have the generosity to share his punish- ment. The appeal was not made in vain. Two or three stepped forward, each more anxious than another to bear a part of the penalty. The cliange which our school has wrought on these children, through the power of kind- ness and religion, could not be better set forth than by a scene to which I will introduce my readers. Summer weather brings the butterfly from its clirysalis, and tempts the various insect tribes to roam on the wings of free- dom through the sunny air , and to chil- PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 105 dren of unsettled, roving habits, the summer days and the green fields have irresistible charms. Mr. Gibb found that, as the skies grew warmer, the school grew thinner ; the roll of attendance shortened with the length of the day. He found it necessary to enact, " That no boy sliall go away from school, until he is prepared to remain away altogether, or to submit, on his return, to a certain measure' of punishment." The law was passed with acclamation, and he thought all was right. Next day, however, a dozen had absconded. On being brought back, they said they wished to remain at school ; but the four ringleaders refused to submit to the punishment. They were obstinate, and refused to yield, which to Mr. Gibb was a great grief, as they were big- ish boys, and stood most of all in need of such a school. He resolved to try and bend them by an appeal to their better feelings, say- ing,— " Boys, we will not compel you to accept of the food and instruction of which hundreds like you would be glad, who have it not. If 1 06 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, you like to remain, submit to the rules, and you are welcome. Will you do it ?" " No, sir." " Would you have me tell a lie, by not act- ing up to my word ? " *^ No, sir." " Would you like to remain, and be allowed to do as you please ? " " No ; because we would go wrong, sir." " Why, then, not submit to the rule you agreed to ? " " We'll stop if you'll no lich us, sir, — if you'll no gi'e us palmiesJ' " Boys, were you ever punished before ? and why ? " " Because we deserved it." "And don't you deserve it now ? Take it, and be done with it." After trying them in this manner for some time, without any success, Mr. Gibb addressed them in a farewell speech, suited to the taste, and calibre, and character, of those he spoke to, saying,— " Well then, boys, I think I have done ; — I PLEAS FOli RA(^.GED SCHOOLS. lOT can do nothing for you ;— I dare not let you pass. You are going away, and it may be that I will never see you more. Perhaps I will see you rich and respectable men. Perhaps I will see you masters of a fine shop, standing be- hind the counter, with your hair nicely curled, and dressed like gentlemen. Or, may be, when I am an old man, and walk leaning on a staff, I will see you rolling by in a fine carriage drawn by two grey horses, attended by grand servants, and a beautiful lady seated by your side; and when you see me you will say, ' Look ! there's the Ragged School master, that used to lick us when we were laddies : here, Mr. Gibb, there's something to keep your pocket.' Now, these things may be ; but ah I my boys, I much fear that if ever I see you riding, it will be in one of those dark, gloomy carriages, with the locked door and iron grat. ings, conveying you— you know where to ?" " Yes, sir.'' " And is it not likely, if you go away from the school, that you will be obliged to sink to begging again? And then your next step 108 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, down will be to stealing ; and down and down you go. But whether I may see you again in this world or not, I do not know. One thing, however, is certain — we shall meet again, — and where ?" Their heads, till then erect, now began to hang down ; and as one or tv/o answered, " At the last day, sir," they, and the greater num- ber of the children, as if by a sudden shock of electricity, burst into tears. The Superintend- ent of Work, who had worn the red coat for upwards of thirty years, turned on his heel, and the tear glistened in the old soldier's eye, while nothing was to be heard but sobs and sighing. Now was Mr. Gibb's time to drive home the wedge ; and so, though almost over- come himself, he said, " All that I ask of you now, my boys, is a shake of your hand, and we part good friends." Nothing remained now for the poor fellows but to go. Moving slowly to the door, and all the while crying bitterly, they shook hands with their companions and went, — but returned. On the threshold tliey yielded to tlie master's last appeal, fairly con- PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 109 qnered, and examples of the all but omnipotent power of Christian wisdom, combined with Christian kindness. It is but an act of justice to our admirable teacher, to the school, to the cause, and to the children themselves, that I should close this part of my " Second Plea " by the following letter : — Ragged School, Ramsay Lane, 25th December, 1848. Reverend Sir, — I can say that, of the many boys that have attended the Ragged School, I have met with few, indeed none, who have not shown the greatest readiness to do me a per- sonal kindness, either in school or out of it. To show this many instances might be given. Allow me only to trouble you with the follow- [j^a- : J ■ C lost his mother, who was an Irishwoman, and his father, who was a Scotchman (by trade a shoemaker), when he was about six years old. When I found liim he had been trying to provide himself with food and lodgings for upwards of a year, by carrying luggage for passengers to and from 10 110 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway. He seemed rather destitute, and I asked him to come to school ; but it was not till some time after, when he had got a sore foot, that he found his way thither. Afterwards I was seized with typhus fever, and two or three of the boys called to inquire for me every day. C came regularly morn- ing and evening, and was always very anxious to see me ; and so long as he was told I was no better, he went away crying ; but when he was told that I was getting better, the tear was changed to a smile. On the evening be- fore I went to the country for change of air, he was asked to come next morning and assist me to the Canal boat. lie got me safe on board ; and when we had started, I was surprised, on looking out at the window, to see half a dozen of the Ragged School boys, with C at their head, running alongside, and crying, " Yonder he's ;" and this they continued to do till the boat went off at full speed, when they returned, after running nearly half a mile. One day shortly after, on taking a walk in the PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. Ill country, a boy was seen approaching, dressed in clothes t'hat I lial seen in the Ragged School ; and as he came nearer he began to smile. I was a little surprised to find that it was C . He had collected his halfpence till he had raised sixpence, and then set away on the Canal to see his master, with no other prospect than to walk home ; of course his re- turn fare was made up for him. C — — is now working to a flesher, and lodging in the same house with a boy who was once his companion in adversity, and a Ragged School class-mate ; and that boy being scarcely able to clear his way, while C has something to spare, he gives a little, to enable his old fellow-sufferer and scholar to live as comfortably as him- self. In regard to any real saving change being made on these children, I would not like to speak with too much confidence. Any one who knows much about either them or their parents, knows that they are too ready to ap- pear to bear in mind whatever is most likely to benefit their body. One thing, however, is 112 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OE, certain, viz., tliej are a very great deal kinder to each other than they formerly were ; and last week I had a visit from all their mothers or landladies that could attend, for the pur- pose of ascertaining whether any difference, either for better or worse, had been observed in the conduct of any of them since they came to school. Not one of them answered, For the worse. In almost every case the answer was, For the better ; and that the childien were more obedient than they used to be. One said her sons were " very much improved, and not like what they were before at all : they are like new weans altogether." Another said, " They are more kind to each other, and to their sisters; and instead of spending their evenings in running on the streets, as they used to do, they now spend them in singing and reading." Another, that her son " now works at his slate, and reads his Bible, and sings hymns." Another, that her son " is a good deal healthier, and a better boy entirely ^ Another (a blind woman) says, she knows not how to express her gratitude to the people PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 113 ^f the Ragged School ; for her son is now able to read to her at night, and fells her nice stories about Jesus, and sings sweet hymns, -and so forth. From these and similar facts I have reason to believe that the good already done by means of tlicse schools will tell on genera- tions yet unborn ; and tliat some of these poor outcasts will bless God through all eternity that there was once such a thing as the Ragged School. Rev. and Dear Sir, I hope you will excuse the somewhat brief and familiar manner in which I have endeavored to give you a few facts as they stand. I thought to have had them forwarded sooner, but the business of the school, and family sickness, prevented. Rev. Sir, ^ Your obedient Servant, GEO. GIBB. To these cases, furnished by the teachers, I may add another, told to me by a humble but honest neighbor of the mother of one of these boys. Dismissed from a comfortable situation 10* 114 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR, for glaring misconduct, and unable, from bod- ily infirmity, to earn her bread, the mother betook lierself to begging on tlie»streets. This proved a source of gains, which she wasted on habits of drunkenness. The more money to the mother, the more misery to the child. When the mother was intoxicated she was in- furiated ; and the hapless boy often fled from her cruelty to the common stair, where, with his head pillowed on a step, he lay the long winter night, to sleep, — when the cold would let him. Some kind Samaritan brought the child to our school, ignorant as a heathen ; knowing neither his letters nor anything of a God and Saviour. He has now been some twelve months with us ; and our humble friend, the tenant of a room five stories up, and living, to use her own expression, hut and hen from them, tells us that she lias often heard him, on his return in the evening, speaking to his mother as if he were an old grey-haired Chris- tian. With more sense than some beyond his years, he has learnt the divine lesson, " Give not that which is holy unto the dogs ; neither PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 115 cast ye your pearls before swine, lest tliey tram- ple them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." So, when he finds his motlier drunk, he is silent ; but on her sober evenings he reads the Bible to her,— tells her how the master said this and said that,— and, gracious- ly inverting the order of nature, is the monitor and instructor of his own mother. Through the thin partition which separates these upper rooms of poverty from each other, she has often listened with amazement to this child's affec- tionate warnings. Once he said, " Ah I mither, mither, what a dreadful thing, when Jesus Christ comes to judgment, if I, standing at his right hand, should see my mither on the left ; and you're sure to be there if ye live on as you're doing." The remarkable demeanor of this boy, and the visible change wrought on his habits and appearance, have recommended our Kagged School to the neighbors round about. He has earned for it and us the kind- liest regards of that humble noigliborhood— a name there "above all Greek or Roman fame ;" for of how much truer value tlian the applause 116 of a world is the blessing of those who are ready to perish ! Such are the fruits and discipline of our school ; and I have not to tell the reader that money spent upon the young is spent with greatest promise. I have not the shadow of a doubt, that by one single pound contril)uted to the Ragged School, you will do more good than by one hundred pounds spent on Peniten- tiary or Prison ; just as by the power of a one-pound weight you can give a bent to the tender branch, which the weight, not of one, but of one thousand pounds, cannot impart to the giant arm of some gnarled hoary tree. That breaks, but refuses to bend. Growing more and more alive to the proph- et's question, " Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots ? " our eye turns from other schemes to these schools with the fondest anticipations. They offer to our out- cast population " a door of hope in the val- ley of Achor." Other plans of benevolence have been tried on the masses. Home and City Missions have had their period of proba- PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 117 Hon ; and they have proved how hard, we dare not say how liopeless, a task it is to turn the river which has cut itself a channel in the rock ; to change the character of a population that are hard and set in crime. While we would follow the hoary-headed sinner to the edge of his grave, with calls to repent and offers of mercy, still they are the most promis- ing efforts that take the direction of the young. Therefore, the Ragged School has claims on a humane and Christian public, — we shall not say before all other schemes, — but second to none. When we undertake to supply each child with food and education at an expense of £5 per year, — when, for so small a sum of money, a poor outcast may be saved from present misery and eternal ruin, — surely mul- titudes will be found, out of their own abun- dance to give, or by the help of others to raise, this sum. God pity the poor, if, amid the abounding comforts, and wealth, and luxuries of this Christian land, the only doors left open to these outcast children are the dreary portals of the Police Office and the Prison ! 118 SEED-TIME AXD HARVEST: OR, The stability of the empire is bound up with such schemes as ours. What Philanthropy prompts to, and Piety recommends, true Patri- otism demands. If those elements of corrup- tion and mischief, which we liave done so little (Mther to resist or restrain, are allowed to spread for the next half century as they have done during the past, we tremble for the issue. 80 soon as the leaven has leavened the whole lump, what shall the end of these things be ? I believe that the higher, the middle, and some of the humbler classes of society, have not degenerated, but improved, in their moral and religious habits ; but there is a class lying beneath these, at the bottom of the social fabric, which, in whatever aspect it be regard- ed, calls for the serious attention of the coun- try. They have no religion ; they instil no moral principles into their offspring ; their minds are uncultivated ; their habits are bru- tal, profligate, and licentious. In London, in Glasgow, in Edinburgh, and in other such cities, they are increasing at a most dangerous ratio on the educated and church going popu PLE\S FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 119 f lation. Through many districts of the country also, and in a large number of our provincial towns, the same class are springing up and growing with a terrible rapidity. They are mushrooms in growth ; but in durability are cedars. This may be illustrated by the case of May- bole, — a small town, numbering, with the coun- try part of the parish, some five thousand peo- ple. It lies in a sweet district in Ayrshire ; " beautiful in situation ;" surrounded by a fer- tile country ; and hallowed to the memory of Scotchmen as the scene where John Knox and his dexterous antagonist Quentin Kennedy, Abbot of Crossraguel, — the respective cham- pions of Protestantism and Popery, — fought, within a house still standing there, the battle of their respective faiths. From the hill which rises between it and the sea, the shores of Ire- land can be discerned ; and across the narrow channel hordes of Irish papists have passed to deluge with misery, and beggary, and the lowest habits, that beautiful land. The Scotch have been too ready to receive the virus ; and l)e- 120 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, \ come centres of infection. A class accordingly has sprung up there, ignorant alike of the de- cencies of society, and the habits of religion. On week-days the streets and roads swarm with beggars, in rags and wretchedness, naked- ness and squalidness, and other repulsive signs both of poverty and of profligacy. On the blessed Sabbath, grown men and women, and young people of all ages, are strolling through the streets ; or standing idly in their doors ; or roaming over the country, and disturbing its hallowed peace, in their every-day — we sus- pect with many, their only — attire. My friend Mr. Brown, banker and writer there, with most creditable courage and humanity, is grappling with the evil, and endeavoring to establish a Ragged School. Would all elsewhere do the same, the country might yet be saved. The main cause of the wretchedness there or any- where else, is not the want of money, but of morality. We have reason to believe that there is as much money spent, and a large portion of it by this very uneducated, poor, and profligate class of people in this parish of PLEAS FOR RA(;(^.En SCHOOLS. 121 May bole, on spirits and tobacco as equals nearly the whole landed rental. How mon- strous that wliiskey and tobacco shops, which find their best customers among the uneduca- ted, the poor, and the profligate, should draw a revenue little short of what the landlords do from their fields and farms ! Sixteen thousand pounds, it is said, are yearly wasted on nox- ious or useless stimulants ; while the poor and other rates are advancing with railroad speed. When will the respectable classes of the com- munity awake to tlie necessity of arming ir defence of the nation's religion, virtue, and property ? Unless means are employed to change the habits, and arrest the formidable advances of this class, the dream of Pharaoh shall be realized in other lands than Egypt, where the lean kine devoured the fat, and were no fatter thereby ! Improvidence and dissipation create that class which threaten the welfare of our coun- try, and multiply the objects of our Ragged Schools. I know that Acts of Parliament can neither make men moral nor religious ; yet 11 122 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR,, much can be done by Government to remove sources of temptations from the people, and foster habits of thrift and sobriety. The chil- dren of onr manufacturing districts being able, by means of the wages they earn, to cast off the parental yoke at too early an age, there is the more need to teach them habits of prudence and foresight. The earnings of the father ex- ceeding but by little those of his child, and inadequate, without these, to feed the unpro- ductive members of the family, parents are afraid to correct and curb their children ; while headstrong youth is ready to resent the interference, and abandon the parental roof. Nor is this all the evil. In some cases the parent wastes on vice the wages of his chil- dren ; while in all cases he lies under a pow- erful temptation to withdraw them from school before they have received an adeguate educa- tion. Imperfectly educated, anc^rodependent, at an age too early, of parental authority, it becomes the more necessary to guard our man- ufacturing youth from temptations to evil, and to compass them round with inducements to PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 123 thrift and economy. The earlier the plant is drawn from the nursery-bed, the more need there is to plant it in some sheltered and sunny nook. Now, how are our manufacturing and handi- craft youth situated? By public-houses and spirit-shops they are surrounded with innumer- able temptations ; while to many of them Sav- ings Banks are hardly known by name. Dis- sipation has her nets drawn across every street. In many of our towns, sobriety has to run the gauntlet of half a dozen spirit-shops in the space of a bow-shot. These are near at hand —open by day and blazing by night, both on Sabbath and Saturday. Drunkenness finds im- mediate gratification ; while economy has to travel a mile, it may be, for her Savings Bank ; and tliat opens its doors to thrift but once oi twice a week perhaps. The consequences of these temptations, and this neglect, are becoming so formidable, and, it would appear, by all existing means so in- curable, that some wise and sagacious men are disposed to ask the interference of the Gov- 124 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, ernment. They could compel all under a cer tain age who receive wages, to deposit a pro- portion of them in bank. It may be said that this is an interference with man's natural lib- erty. But they answer, that that has been already encroached on by various Acts of Par- liament. The hours of work, both in mills and collieries, are regulated by law ; and the seamen of some, if not all of our harbors, are compelled by Act of Parliament to invest a proportion of their wages to maintain them- selves and families, when disabled from labor by accident, or by the infirmities of a prema- ture old age. Such a proposal may be imprac- ticable ; but this admits of no doubt, that it is vain to deal with disease as with health ; and if it be granted that God never fitted the child for circumstances where, ere it has reached the age of puberty, it becomes independent of parental support, and can defy parental au- thority, such an abnormal condition justifies and demands extraordinary remedies. This at least the law can, and ouglit to do, — it should put down nine out of ten of these drinking- PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 126 sliops ; and grant no man a license to deal in spirits whose character does not furnish good security that he will not trade in crime, and make his house a centre of drunkenness, and a curse to the neighborhood — raising a house to himself out of the wreck and ruin of other men's homes and characters, bodies and souls. While trusting to tlie gospel of Jesus Christ as the only efficient regeneration of our fallen race, it is well to avail ourselves of every check to this damnable and destructive vice. The requiring of certificates by applicants for license, the discipline of the Church, and last, though not least, Temperance and Total Ab- stinence Societies, are all commendable. 'They have accomplished much good : still they hav€ not eradicated the evil. Why, as an addi- tional clieck, should not the masters of these public-houses, and other venders of ardent spirits, be compelled to bear the burden of the poverty which their trade is the means of pro- ducing ? How many families do they reduce to poverty, beggary, and want ? It were but justice, that the man who knowingly, and for 11* 126 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR, liis own gain, supplies the poor drunkard with tlie means of destruction, should be compelled to maintain his family. Should a man be allowed to trade in crime, and not only go scatheless of the consequences, but get the pub- lic to bear them ? Are there not thousands of the venders of spirits wlio supply the stimulant where they know that it goes to destroy the drinker's health, and beggar his family ? Instead of ardent spirits, let a man, knowing that the ])urc]iaser buys the article for purposes of sui- cide, sell arsenic or prussic acid ; and the very least that justice requires in such a case is, that he shall maintain the family of him in whose death he was art and part. Why should not the innocent sufferers of a parent or hus- band's dissipation obtain such recourse in law against those who, for their own gain, tempted him to ruin, and involved them in poverty ? This would close, within another week, nine- tenths of those low drinking-shops. Never, in the most frightful panic, had the banks such a run for money as these would have for dam- ages. PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 12T I venture, wliile on this subject, to suggest a question. When, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, the drunkard becomes not only a disgrace to his friends, but often also, in some shape or other, a burden on the community, destroying the happiness, if not the lives, of his family, dissipating their substance, and re- ducing them to want, why should we stand by, without interfering between his madness and his offspring ? Were the man insane, in the common sense of the term, the law allows our interference. It steps in ; takes his keys ; and manages the property for the benefit of his household,— shutting him up within the walls of an asylum. While the fumes are in his brain, the drunk man is a madman if the temp- tation comes in his way, and the habitual slave of this vice is as incapable of controlling his appetite by his reason, or conquering his pas sions by his judgment, as the inmate of a luna- tic asylum. It becomes one species, and the worst species, of monomania. Account for it as physicians or metaphysicans may, the man is as unable to resist the attractions of th« 128 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, spirit-bottle, as a piece of iron those of the magnet, or a stone that of the earth. Accus- ing himself, and often cursing the day he was born, — bitterly mourning his disgrace, and the fate which he sees impending over a happy home, — knowing, as well as others do, that he is ruining both body and soul, — yet he yields to the temptation ; and is swept along, spell- bound, impotent to resist. It were the kindest thing to them, and best for all dependent on them, that the slaves of this horrible vice should be dealt with as lunatics. Left at large, they waste their property, and health, and life. They die at a premature age. They burden the sober and industrious with the support of innumerable widows and children. But let them be confined to the walls of an asylum, let them be compelled to engage there in regu- lar and industrial employments, and perfectly isolated from all intoxicating liquors, the old cravings and habits would die out. In course of time, many, most of them, with body and mind restored to a healthy tone, would return to the bosom of their families and the business PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 129 of life, in a sense, new creatures. Why should not their friends, any party having an interest, or the public officers of justice, have power to cognosce every man or woman who could be convicted, before a competent tribunal, of being an habitual drunkard ? By every possi- ble means we ought to protect the helpless ofi- spring of the drunkard, and brand his crime with infamy. Surely it is high time that our country be delivered from the taunt of being, while claiming to be the most devout, actu- ally the most drunken beneath the sun. The charge is not true ; yet how great is our shame, and how enormous are the burdens entailed on us by the ignorance, indolence, diseases, poverty, and crimes, of which this national vice is the prolific parent! If it is the duty of Government to remove as far as possible temptations to crime, it is no less their duty to employ all legitimate means of amendment and cure ; and none present stronger claims on the support of tlie country, and the countenance of the State, than Rag- ged Schools. Standing apart from all ques- 130 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, tions about State endowments for ordinary education, they fall properly under the nead of Police ; and, under a Government suffi- ciently enlightened to foster them, would prove one of its best institutions. The results of education as given without, in contrast to that given within prison walls, are not less certain than the results of those laws which govern the march of seasons or the tides of ocean. The excellent men who teach within the jail would do ten times more good with- out it. For every one they turn out of prison a reformed criminal, they would keep ten out of it, — were their labors bestowed in Ragged Schools, on the class that furnish its tenants to the jail. When the day comes, that our legislators shall direct a larger portion of their time to matters of moral reform, and tliose social evils which have been alloAved too long to eat like a cancer into the heart of our population, justice will be done iu Parliament to the cause of Ragged Schools. Supposing, what here we neither affirm nor denv, that it is the duty of tlie State to sup- PLEAS Foil hA(;GED SCHOOLS. 131 port all the educational institutions of the country, — in such a case it is clear as noon- day, that among the claimants for public aid, the first to be heard with a liberality co- extensive with their necessities, are these un- cared-for, unhappy children. To support in part or in whole educational institutions for the children of land-owners, or merchants, or tradesmen, or well-paid workmen out of the public funds, and stint or starve Ragged Schools, is a monstrous abuse. In a procession of beggars the rags should flutter in the van ; and from the public treasury others should be supplied only after we are served. In other words, let our universities, colleges, and acad- emies, and parochial or congregational schools, give place to those which cannot live on fees, nor exist without external aid. Our object is, not to form accomplished scholars and a highly cultivated nation, but to save poor wretches from the gallows, the prison, or the penal settlement. They who would move the Government m\ust first move themselves ; and througli 132 schools sustained by our exertions, we must, meanwhile, prove that the scheme is not only plausible, but practicable ; every way worthy of the nation's adoption. It is not commonly the duty of a Government to precede, but to follow the country. Its movements should em- body and express the mind of the nation. Nor can we expect the Government to take action in this matter till the steam is up, and pressing on its wheels. The sooner the better. Not only the well-being, but the very being of our country is bound up with this and other kin- dred schemes. With these it sinks or swims, — survives or dies. Political freedom and commercial prosperity are inseparably con- nected with the social state of nations. They wax or wane with it. " Righteousness exalt- eth a nation ; but sin is a reproach to any people." Let it be borne in mind, that men form good members of society, yielding obedience to the laws, and respecting the property, life and lib- erty of others, under the influence of tAvo, or one of two, principles. Obedience to the law PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 133 springs from regard either to God, or man, or to both ; and therefore true freedom cannot permanently stand on any other foundations than those of morality and religion. With these beneath her, Liberty has a solid pedestal ; without them, she is raised only to fall. Look at the experience of France ! Since she lost so much of her best blood in the massacre of the Huguenots, her head has never been steady. As a nation, — great in many respects as they are, — our neighbors across the Channel want the elements of moral and religious principle ; hence they have oscillated, and till delivered from the baneful and disturbing influences of Popery and Infidelity, they will continue to oscillate, like a pendulum, between Despotism on this hand, and Licentiousness on that. Unless restrained by the love and fear of God, there is nothing to hedge men in within the boundaries of law, save attachment to country, the love or fear of man. But, left to grow up without any knowledge of God, or regard to liis law, what do they owe the coun- try who furnish the material of our Ragged 134 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, Schools? What has the country done for hem to attach them to it ? It has left them o be tempted to crime, and then punished them for its commission. They see thousands, day by day, passing them without so much as a look of pity. Their sorrows all unheeded, how often are they denied the cheapest com- passion, and bidden begone, with the tone and gesture that drive away a troublesome cur ? By some sudden change of fortune, let us taste their bitter cup, — let us find ourselves standing in the open street, in a cold winter day, — our naked feet upon the icy pavement, — the babe in our arms, half clad and half frozen to death, — a weary wife, with wan and shivering chil- dren cowering beneath poverty's threadbare cloak, — and, when stores, filled with every luxury, stand open around us, and savory smells of food are steaming on the frosty air, and mothers, with groups of rosy, laughing children, furred and flannelled against the winter, pass by regardless of our pitiful sor- rows, we should find it hard to be honest, hard to believe that it is right that we should die PLEAS FOB BAGGED SCHOOLS. 135 of hunger, while the cup of others is overflow ing with comforts. If the thought of God came across us, we might fancy him looking down with indignation on the scene ; and that a Father who regarded all his children with equal affection, never intended that a few should monopolize the comforts which he meant for all. Luther says, that " there is no rebellion like that of the belly ;" and how ea- -.ily could we persuade ourselves, that poverty as well as property has its rights, and that we might employ force to compel what kindness should have spontaneously granted. The world has no such security against Socialism, Communism, and such dangerous doctrines, ai. our Holy Faith. It calls us to recognize in the different orders and lots of men, the prov- idence of God ; it fills us with aspirations af- ter a better world ; it supports us by the hope if it ; and it teaches us, in whatsoever state we are, therewith to be content. But the class whose miseries we pity, and whose wrongs we seek to remedy, are moved only by other considerations. It would be hard to convince 136 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR, them that they have any earthly interest in maintaining the present order of society. Their place is the mire and mud. They lie at the bottom of the wheel. A revolution may improve their position : as one said, they may be better, — they cannot be worse. So argues Despair. And let a storm arise, that, reaching the depths of society, shall agitate this lowest class, and the country will learn that it was a miserable economy which left millions of uned- ucated, irreligious, and desperate men, to form at once the tools, and the victims of revolution. Politicians may rest assured, that when this rapidly-growing body of ignorance and crime has reached its full strength, they will have a giant to contend with. Events have proved that fighting is a game which other parties than soldiers can play at. Government by bayonets and batons is as uncertain as it is expensive ; and the world is learning to its cost that the Bible, while the cheapest, is in every way the best instrument of Government. It teaches man how to bear liis wrongs till he find a right way to remedy them. It teaches PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 137 the slave to break his chain, without breaking it on the head of his oppressor ; and that he ceases to be a slave, not to become a despot, but to be a freeman. Like some who ceased their alarm at tlie consumption of coal, on learning that the fields of Newcastle would keep our engines going and chimneys smoking so long as they were likely to live to travel, or roast to eat, there be base people, content to sit still without sac- rifice or self-denial, if assured that the evils we dread will not happen in tlieir time. All that they care for is that the ship swim so long as they are aboard. They are content if there be peace in their day. But what, with the water steadily rising, if a storm should rise ? It would precipitate the fate of the sinking vessel, and, throwing her on her beam ends, send her lurching to the bottom. A tree, decayed at the roots and loosened in the soil, may stand so long as the atmosphere is calm ; but let a gale of wind spring up, and, with a crash corresponding to its magnitude, it falls to the ground. 138 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, We are no timid alarmists. I would adopt the brave words of the French general, who, arriving on the field where his gallant coun- trymen had sustained a defeat, pulled out his^ watch, and, glancing at tlie sinking sun, ex- claimed, " There is time enough yet to fight another battle, and win it !" With our unex- ampled means, with our national energy, and, notwithstanding all our defects, with the amount of true Christianity in this land, I be- lieve there is yet time enough to break up these formidable masses, and arrest the progress of ignorance and corruption. The foundations of society are not irremediably decayed. But if the causes which are now undermining the social fabric are left in active operation, this empire shall sooner or later fall, like some ma- jestic and splendid iceberg, whose foundations, hidden in the deep, have been worn by the wa- ter, hollowed by the waves, till on some tem- pestuous day the glittering edifice begins to rock, and, toppling over, buries, amid the foam- ing surge and swell it raises, the unfortunate ships which had been moored to its sides, the PLEAS FOE RAGGED SCHOOLS. 139 unhappy mariners who had sought safety in its shelter. To attempt to avert such a fate is every man's duty ; and, more than he dreams of, is within every man's doing. This is no idle say- ing. Were we to make a pilgrimage, as soon as to the lonely lieath where martyrs repose, we would direct our steps to the busy streets of Portsmouth ; and would turn from the proud array of Old England's floating bul- warks to seek out the humble shop where John Pounds achieved works of mercy, and earned an imperishable fame. There is no poetry in his name, and none in his profession ; but there was more than poetry in his life, — the noblest benevolence. Within the shop where he cobbled shoes he might be seen surrounded by some score or two of ragged urchins, whom he was educating and converting into valuable members of society. Honor to the memory of him, beneath whose leathern apron there beat the kindest heart, — tlicre glowed a bosom fired with the noblest ambition. Witlioutfee or re- ward from man, while he toiled for his hard- 140 ^EED-TIME AND HARVEST J OR,' earned bread with the sweat of his brow, this poor cobbler educated not less than five hun- dred outcasts before they laid him in his lowly grave! Honor, we may say again, to the memory of this illustrious patriot ! Nor is there any sight we would have travelled so far to see as that self-same man, when he followed some ragged boy along the quays of Ports mouth, keeping his kind, keen eye upon him and tempting the young savage to his school with the bribe of a smoking potato. Princes and peers, judges and divines, might have stood uncovered in his presence ; and marble monu- ments might be removed from the venerable walls of Westminster to make room for his. His history proves what a single-handed but right-hearted man may do ; what — would the reader address himself in earnest to the work — he himself might do. Animated by his ex- ample, and encouraged by his success, we en- treat you to turn an eye of piety and of pity on these unhappy children. These are the children of our common Father. Man, they are thy brothers and sisters, — bone of thy bone, PLEAS FOR RA(jr.El) SCHOOLS. 141 and flesh of thy flesh : their hard and melan- choly lot may be thy crime, — it cannot be their own. Sinner, they are thy fellows : in them see an emblem of tliy state when thou wast an outcast, too, lying in thy blood, when a God of mercy passing by, looked on thee and said, " Live." Christian, they were pitied by thy dying Lord : for them, as well as thee, He bled, and groaned, and breathed his last on Calvary ; and of such He said, " Suffer little children to come unto me." Parents, you who know a father's and a mother's heart ! look on them ; and thank God, who maketh one to differ from another, that their miserable lot is not that of your more fortunate offspring. As you smile on them, and see their bright, pleasant faces beam- ing round your board or cheerful fire, — as you bless their heads, and hear their liymns, and kiss them in their warm couch, — refuse not a tear, a prayer, a contribution, for many who often know a parent's curses, but never a Chris- tian parent's care. To God, in whose hands are the hearts of 142 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST. all men, we commend this cause. May He, who out of the mouth of babes and sucklings ordaineth strength, give effect to this appeal, and crown our labors with success. Thus shall these schools be instrumental, not only in sav- ing many now lost to society, but in bringing inany to Jesus. In their best, highest, and holiest sense, they shall realize the saying, — " This, my son, was dead, and is alive again ; HE was lost, and IS FOUND." THIRD PLEA. THE nineteen til century, though little more than half run out, will prove one of the most remarkable in the history of tlie world. As distance grows, many of what are now con- sidered its great events shall, like mountains afar off, fade on the eye, and at length sink out of view. Time will fill up the letters which the sword has carved ; new revolutions will throw down the barriers of existing empires ; and, some centuries hence, the world will re- tain no trace of many who are now playing the chief parts on its stage. The men who have immortalized themselves and their times are those who, amid the din of machinery, or in retreats remote from the bustle of camps, the intrigues of court, and the noisy combats of public assemblies, have studied the arts, not of war, but of peace. When the world has lost almost all of Wellington but his name, James Watt shall live in his inventions. His genius (143) 144 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, shall continue through untold generations to subdue the soil, and triumph over the sea ; to employ the hands and fill the mouths of mill- ions. Among many peculiar features of our age, one of the most remarkable is the expansive and the comprehensive character of its benev- olence. Our grandfathers or great grand- fathers, though good people, were content to live for themselves. Their religion was con- templative rather than active. To live a holy life, to rear a virtuous and pious family, was the height of their ambition. Their sympa- thies were confined to a circle so narrow that they remind one of the story told of an honest countryman, who, away from home, attended worship in the church of the parish where he chanced to be. The preacher was a great ora- tor. The audience were moved to tears ; not so the rustic. He sat hard and stolid as the bench beneath him ; and replied, when asked how he could possibly sit unmoved by such a flood of pathos, " Oh, you see I don't belong to the parish I" PLEAS FOR T,.U1(1E1) SCHOOLS. 14f In olden time^^, what did not belong to the parish, the neighborliood, or the family, ex- cited little intere^^t. With exceptions hardly wortli mentioning, the chnrches of Christ did nothing for the conversion of the heathen, ei- ther abroad or at home. Though there are now five vessels belonging to missionary socie- ties sailing about their work in the Pacific Ocean alone, formerly no ships left London, Liverpool, Glasgow, or any other port, with missionaries among their passengers, and Bi- bles part of their cargo. Foreign, Home, City, Medical Missions; Sabbath, Evening, Apprentice, Factory, and Ragged Schools ; Bible, Tract, Pastoral Aid, and Total Absti- nence Societies ;— these, and many other such schemes, are the growth and glory of our own age. Thus, while science and the arts have made unparalleled progress since heads now grey were black, and grown men were boys, the church has not lagged beliind. Pressing forward on her higher career, she lias kept abreast of them in the race. Another remarkable feature of our era, is 146 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR the acknowledgment and practical applica,- tion of the power of union ; of cooperatioM, a? better than individual action. Separate the atoms that form a hammer, and in that state of minute division they would fall on a stone with no more effect than snow-flakes. Weld them into one solid mass, and, swung round by the quarryman's brawny arm, they descend on the rock like a thunderbolt. Stand by the falls of Niagara, and as the waters, gathered from a hundred lakes, are rolling with the voice of a hundred thunders over the rocky precipice, fancy them divided into their individual atoms ! They miglit gem with sparkling dew-drops vast tracts of field or forest ; in clouds of gold, and amber, and purple, they might hang cur tains round the gates of day ; but where were the onward, overwhelming power of the majes- tic flood ? Gone ; and gone the vaunt with which a New Englander met the boast of a Neapolitan, during a brilliant eruption of Vesuvius. The poor Italian had the glory of Vesuvius, if he had nothing else, to boast of in his priest-ridden country. Directing the PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 147 attention of his companion to the mountain, as it shot up showers of fiery stones, and licked the sky with long tongues of flame, and poured streams of glowing lava down its riven sides, lie exclaimed, " You have nothing like that in your country!" "No," said the other, with nasal twang, but thrust quick and sharp as rapier's, " Yet, I guess we have a bit of water that would put it out in two minutes." Now, as with the combined power of matter, so is it with the combined power of men. They do in masses what they would not attempt, or, at- tempting, could not achieve as individual units. Bravely and gallantly as our soldiers fought at Waterloo, I doubt if there were twenty men on that field who would have stood up singl} ff^r seven long hours to be shot at like targets . yet, massed in solid square and column, how they stood ! from morning to sundown, facing the foe, and budging not a foot, till night crowned their efibrts with victory. The wise man says, " two are better than one ; " and our Lord Limself illustrated the advantages of union when he sent forth his disciples two by two. 148 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, From the expansive benevolence, and com- bined action, which characterize the Christian- ity of our own age, have sprmig up, among other holy enterprises, those Ragged Schools which I advocated years ago. The most need- ed, they have been the most successful of those philanthropic schemes which form at once a burden to the rich and a blessing to the poor. I remember the day when they were but a beau- tiful theory ; in the eyes of many but the rain- bow-colored dream of benevolent enthusiasts. In those days it was necessary to lay bare the bleeding wounds of humanity ; to move the pub- lic by tales of misery, and raise, if we could, a flood of feeling to float us over the pecuniary dif- ficulties that barred our way. Many were cal- lous. People had got accustomed to the evils we sought to cure, as much as the woman to the bad water she had used from childhood ; and who, on being asked what she tJiought of the supply which municipal reformers had brought to the town, declared it not worth drinking, — for " it had neither taste nor smell ! " Some, like the old masters of paint- PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 149 ing, seemed to consider rags rather picturesque than otherwise : and in the great mass of men and women familiarity with the evil had bred indifference, if not contempt. Others there were who ridiculed the idea of reforming so- ciety, ^o far as in any perceptible degree to lessen the amount of crime. They deemed us fanatics, if not fools ; and, buttoning up their pockets, settled the question with this sage aphorism, as long as there are pockets to pick there will be pickpockets. They did not seem to see that their mode of treating the subject might be applied to other things besides Rag- ged Schools. It might be said, Why attempt to prevent murder ? as long as there are throats to cut there will be cut-throats. Away with light-houses! as long as there are ships there will be shipwrecks. Away with drugs and doctors! as long as there are diseases there will be deaths. Away with our national de- fences ! as long as the French remember Wa terloo there will be danger of an invasion. A more serious ol)jection to Ragged Schools seemed to lie in the averment, that bv feeding 13* 150 SEED-TIME AXD HARVEST; OR, and educating the cliildren of the abandoned, we were bestowing a premium on crime. It was based on the same mistake as the fault some find with the comfortable temperature, the cleanliness, and the good diet of our pris- ons. These, it is said, act as inducements to crime ; they tempt honest men to become rogues, since rogues find themselves better ofi" in jail than honest, hard-working men at home. This is a mere fallacy. I know how rogues weary for the end of their sentence, — counting the months, and days, and hours ; aye, and the minutes. Put it to the proof ; and it will be found that the most destitute wretch thinks clean walls, and warmth, and substantial diet a poor set-off against wild joys, and the sweets of lib- erty. Withdraw the warders ; throw open the prison gates ; and how many of the ten- ants, for love of the comfortable lodgings, will remain ? Not one. They would swarm out like bees in summer day from the door of a hive. Not one of them but holds it better, in the words of the old moss-trooper, " to Jwar the loverocJc sing than the mouse cheeps And he PLEAS FOR UMXED SCHOOLS. 151 Who faucies it would be otherwise, is not more ianoraiitof hu.nan nature than such as fear that decent parents will give themselves up to dissipation, because they know that their chil- dren will find a refuge within the walls ot a Ragged School. Children are indeed pledges for good conduct, hostages which men give the State ; and, like a vessel which owes her safety to her moorings, many parents owe then- goodness, and some have owed even then- greatness, to the affections that bind them to their offspring. In humbler spheres than his many have felt the power which introduced Lord Erskine to fortune. When a briefless barrister, with a wife and children to support, he got engaged in a great cause ; he plead it before the assembled rank, and power, and genius of England ; and won it. Asked how he unaccustomed to public speaking, was able to speak so fluently, boldly, and brilliantly be- fore such an audience, he replied that ho thought, as he rose to his feet, that he felt his children pulling at his gown, and cry- ing, " Father, father, now is the time to make 152 our bread." I admit this influence, and indeed recognize in it the beneficent arrangement of Providence ; yet what sober, industrious, afi'ec- tionate father ever became an idle, drunken profligate, from expecting his children to find parents in the patrons of a Ragged School. I never met with or heard of such a case. Fallen as man is, he is not sunk so low as that. By other paths, and through other doors, men descend the easy steps to perdition. Irrelig- ion, and ignorance, beer and dram-shops, not Ragged Schools, make drunken parents and destitute children. These schools have no more tendency to produce ragged children, tlian paper-mills the rags which they manufac- ture. Converting the ofi'spring of the thief and drunkard into valuable members of society, they may be justly likened to those beautiful macliines, which out of foulest rags bring sheets of a snow-white fabric, to receive from pen or types the tenderest sentiments or the noblest truths, and carry them to the ends of the world. Commenced fifteen years ago, Ragged PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 153 Schools have now liad a full trial ; and tlieir benefits, to use the words of Dr. Chalmers, are matter not experiment, but of experience. The tree, saith the Lord, is known by its fruit ; and by that unerring test we are willing, and indeed anxious that they should be tried. For this purpose, I might crowd these pages with statistics drawn from the provincial towns, as well as from the largest cities of the kingdom ; and all demonstrating their entire success. These institutions are everywhere : and the best proof of their value lies, perhaps, in the fact that no Ragged School, once opened, has ever been shut up ; while other schemes, from French republics downward, have burst like soap bubbles. The poor cobbler, John Pounds of Ports- mouth, the great paper-maker, the late Mr. Cowan of Edinburgh, and other less known but not less benevolent individuals, gathering together some poor children, and bridging the gulf between ignorance and education with a loaf of bread, initiated our system many years ago. But to Mr. Watson, sheriff of Aberdeen, 154 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, belongs the honor of raising the Ragged School to the status of a public institution. The scheme, as it came from his hand, was but " an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains." Yet, more fortunate than many philanthropists, he has lived to see it shake, and scatter, and spread itself, till now harvests of saved ones are gathered year by year from every corner of the land. Its birth, like that of Him on whose bosom it seeks to lay these children, was obscure. It had no solemn or brilliant inauguration ; yet that which began some fifteen years ago in a loft in a mean street in Aberdeen, has now grown into a national institution, at whose meetings nobles deem it an honor to preside ; to whicl the churches lend their countenance, and the State its support. To attempt to collect all the facts from the wide field occupied by Ragged Schools, would lay this plea open to the critique pronounced on an English Dictionary, which a wag had handed to a witling in search of something to while away an hour. " A very good book," he PLEAS FOR R A (1(5 ED SCHOOLS. 155 Baid, after haviug travelled over pages on "and," "apple," "at;" and "bee," "bone," " but ;" " calf," " cat," and " cow ;" " but it saya amazing little on each subject." Such were this plea, should I attempt a history of all the Ragged Schools that lie between St. George's Channel and Pentland Firth. Besides, it would present little else * than tables of dry statistics. This I shall avoid : because, though jj:ood in measure, and, like those solid parts of the frame which support the flesh, very neces- sary to sustain an argument, statistics, like a dish of bones, are dry eating ; hard to chew, difiicult of digestion. The most interesting and instructive way of dealing with the matter, will be to choose a sample of the stock. For that purpose, I take the Original Ragged School of Edinburgh. I select that, not because it is better than others, but because it is the school at whose birth I presided, and with whose history, growth, and progress, I am best acquainted. Now, taking that as a fair specimen of Ragged Schools, I state, — 156 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, I. That these Schools have put down the great evil of juvenile mendicancy. Twelve years ago, before our Schools were opened, the streets of Edinburgh swarmed with boys and girls whose trade was begging, and whose end was the jail. They rose every morn- ing from the lower districts, like a cloud of mosquitoes from a marsh, to disperse them- selves over the city and its suburbs. Defiant of the police, they pursued their calling with a perseverance that amounted to persecution. People were glad to give money to get rid of them. These beggars, when force failed, had recourse to fraud ; the motto of old and young being Arte vel Marte. For instance, a humane friend of mine, and a clever woman besides, had often assisted a widow and her child. Well, the girl one day presented herself with eyes streaming in tears, and her little heart like to break with sobs — her mother was dead. Ever ready to weep with them that weep, my friend gave linen for a shroud, and money for a coffin. By and by, such a genial day as brings out the first flowers and songs of PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 157 spring, tempted her, for she was delicate, out of doors. Something in the street recalled to her memory the poor orphan and its dead mother. At that moment slie turned a corner, and suddenly found herself face to face with the corpse. It is impossible to fancy her as- tonishment. Had she met this awful object in the gloaming, or under the pale moonlight, she might have dropped down, struck with fear ; but to meet the dead walking about in broad day, and in busy streets, was contrary to all precedent. She was speechless ; and before she had time to solve the mystery, the oppor- tunity vanished, — and the apparition also ; for that, equally surprised, took to its heels, and made off apace in the form of a sturdy beggar. The very children of this caste were great actors and remarkably ingenious. I one day witnessed an instance of this in a boy, who, when typhus fever was raging in town, per- formed that difiScult operation vulgarly called skinninq a flint. The patient was a sour, mea- gre, vinegar-looking old lady ; the operator a little fellow, without shoe on his foot, cap 14 158 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, on his head, or shirt on his back ; but with a pair of bright eyes gleaming out of hollow sockets. Having observed him fix his regards on the old woman, I watched the proceedings. He approached her with a most pitiful look and whine. He might as well have spoken to a stone. To use the slang of his class, it was no go. Her response was a snarl and poke of her umbrella. Seeing at a glance how the land lay, he put up his helm, and went off on another tack. Addressing himself to her sel- fishness, in an instant he rolled up the sleeve of a tattered jacket, and sticking his yellow, skinny arm in her face, he edged close up to the old body, saying, " Out o' the Infirmary, ma'am, with typhus." It was a 7'use got up foi the occasion ; but the acting was perfect — th( effect sudden, electric. The poor creature started as if she had received a shock. At one dive her hand was deep in her pocket. Seiz- ing the first coin, she dropped it into liis palm, and hobbled away ; glad to get the little rogue ft*om between the wind and her nobility. We had no Ragged School then ; and T did PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 159 not commit tliis urchin to the police. Why should I ? I knew that lie would be in their hands too soon, — caged like a captive bird ; and I had not the heart to shut up that free denizen of the streets within four stone walls, and rob him of his liberty, wild though it was. So long as society stood by, careless what be- came of him, nor stretching out a hand to keep his head above water, she, the greater sinner of the two, had no right to assume virtuous airs. Besides, what good could come of locking him up in a prison ? Did my reader ever visit a jail ? Did you ever look in at the eyelet of a cell-door, and within those naked walls see a little boy — immured in that living coffin? He should be playing with laughing mates on the village green, or chasing the butterfly over llowery mead, or nutting in the bosky glen, or fishing some crystal stream, or conning his lesson amid the hum of the busy school, or sit- ting with brothers and sisters in the ruddy gleam of the fireside at home ; but there he pines ; lonely ; weary ; spirit crushed ; the 160 lustre quenched in his eye ; rosy health faded from his cheek ; and all vigor gone out of his, unknit frame. I have seen that ; and if you could look on that without a touch of pity, and without hating prisons as schools for child- hood, I would throw down my pen in despair. What effect have prisons had in deterring from crime, or in reforming criminals ? Weigh- ed in the balance, they have been found wanting. How could it be otherwise ? J ust as the caterpillar leaves its chrysalis case a perfect insect, the young delinquent emerges from his cell a fully developed criminal. Besides bear- ing the brand of a prison, he is lost. After that, as one poor fellow said to me, "We have not a chance, sir." What tradesman will take them into his shop, or what mistress into her kitchen ? They are shut out from all honest employment. They will not starve ; they must steal. Society, having first neglected, now shakes off the drowning wretches : they sink, and no wonder ! Self-respect — next to the fear of God, man's best bower anchor — gone, they drift on, a wreck without mast or helm, to PLEAS FOR RAOrxED SCHOOLS. 1()1 certain ruin. Don't blame them for throwing themselves into the arms of their ohl associates ; none others are open to receive them. They have neither choice nor chance in this Chris- tian land. It is not to be supposed that no means were tried before the institution of Ragged Schools to suppress street begging. The most strenuoiLS and persevering efforts were made. The police did their utmost, but these urchins were as ill to catch and to hold as eels. The Magistrates, pregnant with great things, issued proclama- tions against begging or giving charity in the streets. What cared these city Arabs for pro- clamations ? not a straw. They could not read them. They went for nothing with others as well as with them. For, so long as hunger stretched ont its skinny hands for bread, so long as poverty shivering in squalid rags appealed to human pity, and childhood's sad face, looking as if it had never been lighted with a smile, looked up implorkigly into ours, kind hearts were not to be drilled into with- holding charity. If, listening to what men 162 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR, call prudence, we ever refused our pittance, how did their ghastly faces seem to stare on us as we sat at our comfortable table — marring its enjoyment? They haunted busy fancy in the darkness of night ; we saw the creature re- turning wet, and weary, and hungry, to be beaten by a brutal father or drunken mother ; or cowering cold and sleepless, like a houseless dog, in open stair or beneath some shed or archway. Let me illustrate what, ere our schools were opened, was the condition of many among these children, by a case which occurred last year. Returning in one of the fiercest storms I have faced, from the opposite end of the town, it was with difficulty I made good my way round the base of the crags on the south side of the Castle Rock. Entering our pictur- esque High Street, where I kept the " cantle o' the causey " to avoid smashing chimney-cans, and passing homeward along some of our busiest thoroughfares, I found them all but cleared, as by rounds of grape shot. Though a dav on which a man would not have sent out PLEAS FOR HAGGEl) SCHOOLS. 16^ a dog, I saw a child seven years old in one of the streets. Poor wretch ! he stood in the flooded gutter, his rags glazed with the rain, and the storm pelting on his l)are h-ead ; it was pitiful to see him emaciated and shivering, and hear his attempts to sing. Of course, I was stirred with indignation against the brutal parent who could turn out an infant in such weather ; and use its misery to plunder the humane of money— to be spent, no doubt, m damning drink. On giving a little charity, and bidding the creature go home immediately, I heard one sav, " That's right, sir, send him to Dr. Guthrie's Ragged School." On turning round, I found the speaker, buttoned close up to the throat, with a cap pulled over his brows ; he had the appearance of a decent, sober, well-conditioned mechanic. A fellow- feeling makes us wondrous kind : and, pleased with his humanity, I could not but introduce myself. How luminous, though begrimed with smoke, his face became! He thrust out a paw, black as the back of his forge, to shake hands. I accepted the compliment as from a duchess. 164 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OB, All honor to the moral worth and honest kindliness that glowed in the man's look, and were felt in a grip like a squeeze of his own vice. That, by-the-by, set down here to the credit of humble life. Resolved to be at the bottom of the case, I put myself in communica- tion with the police, and learned this child's history. His father had become a drunkard ; afterwards a thief; and was at that time undergoing a sentence of banishment. His mother, perhaps first broken-hearted, was a dissipated woman. Beside this, and another boy still younger, she had a daughter twelve years of age — -just ripening for ruin. Heedless of that, their mother hounded them out in all weathers, and at all hours of the night as well as day. She would have drink, though she were damned herself and damned them too. Save that case, I have not seen one of the kind in our streets for years. But before the Ragged Schools were opened our city swarmed with many hundreds in a condition as helpless and as hopeless. Now the juvenile beggars are all gone. The race is extinct. What has PLEAS FOR RACGEl) SCHOOLS. 165 become of them ? They are not mouldering in the grave, the last refuge of wretchedness ; nor are they pining in prison cells, turning the weary crank, and cursing those who have dealt them out nothing but neglect and punishment. They are off the streets, and in our schools. Once no care was taken of them, and no pro- vision made for them ; therefore a humane public, supplying them with money, fostered a system much more ruinous to those that got, than costly to those that gave. Their voca- tion is gone. If any now solicit charity, the answer is not money, or a rough repulse, or a curse, but—" Go to the Ragged School." There is no excuse left either for begging or giving. And the consequence is, that we have done what neither police nor magistrate could do. We have succeeded in thoroughly putting a stop to juvenile mendicancy. The magis- trate, now in circumstances to pass on these anfortunates the happy sentence of daily bread, kind training, and a Christian educa- tion, sits with comfort on the bench— dispens- ing not law only, but justice. The wretched 160 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, are happy ; the lost are saved. Training up for useful occupations, they are on the way to hocome respectable men and women. Their little feet, turned from the prison door, are treading the pathway to lieaven. A loving Saviour has his wish, " Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." And in our school, where they are all busy as bees, sharp as needles, bright as the morning, happy as the day is long, I never hear them sweetly singing their little hymns, but I seem to listen to the voice of angels and the song of Bethle- hem, " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men." II. By means of Ragged Schools the num- l)er of juvenile criminals in our jails has been greatly reduced. •' The one half of mankind does not know how the other half live," is a remark that ap- plies with special truth to our criminal popula- tion. Every newspaper, indeed, has details of crime j but some read only the list of births, younger people only the list of marriages, and PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. li)7 hangers-on for patronage, posts, and livings, only the list of deaths ; politicians con lead- ing articles, and merchants study prices cur- rent, Sound IntelUgence, shipping lists, the state of stocks — whether they are up or down. Though a few dip into the police reports, and a scandalous trial is perused by many with avidity, and such monstrous cases as Palmer's in England and Miss Smith's in Scotland draw all eyes for a while, and people have a vague floating notion that there is a great deal of wickedness in the country, yet the amount of crime and the number of criminals are subjects of which almost all novel, and most news readers are profoundly ignorant. It is not possible to give the exact numbers of those that infest society, and live by plun- der ; whose existence is a curse to us, and also to themselves. But we know the number of com- mitments ; and taking the average from 1841 to 1850. for instance, the yearly number of convictions in England, both summary and at sessions and assizes, stands thus : — ] 68 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, Convicted summarily, males, 56.055 Do. at sessions and assizes, females, 17,201 73,256 Males, 22,439 Females, 5,299 27,738 100,994 Add to these convictions in Scotland, 3,994 104,988 That these numbers pretty fairly represent the state of crime, is evident from their cor- respondence with those given by Captain Wil- liams in the following* table, as the average of eight years preceding 1850 : — Convicted summarily, 73,582 Do. at sessions and assizes, 28,101 101,683 According to other calculations, our crim- inal population numbers not less than 150,000. What a formidable evil ! Here is a host of criniiuals, equal in number to the British army proper ; and, strange to say, many who com- pkiin loudly of the expense of a standing army of soldiers have not a word to say against this standing army of thieves. Adding two per- PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOC>LS. 169 Bons, as on an average, dependent upon each of these criminals, we have 300,000 of the worst characters, maintained, or, after a costly fashion maintaining themselves, at the public expense. Thieving is a regular business ; a trade which some conduct with the regularity of a bank or of a mercantile establishment. In illustration of this, let me tell what was told to me by one of the heads of a large publish- ing and bookselling house in London. Their premises consist of a shop facing the street ; behind that a spacious room filled with valua- ble books ; and beyond that again a reading- room, supplied with newspapers and magazines. From the shelves of the middle room, they had from time to time missed many volumes. Un- able to detect the depredator, their suspicions began reluctantly to rest on some of the young men in their employment. My friend, howev- er, as he was one day ruminating on the mat- ter, recollected the visits of a person who came frequently, and always passed on to the inner rooms ; but never bought anything. 15 170 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST, OR, This looked suspicious. Attired in black, wearing a white neckcloth, and presenting a venerable appearance, he looked not unlike a dignitary, at the very least, a dean of the church. Could he be the rogue ? My friend dismissed the unworthy thought. However, it recurred, and fixed itself in his mind. He re- solved to watch. So next day when the old gentleman entered, and making, as usual, some remark on the weather, glided into the inner room, the publisher stationed himself by a small pane of glass which, from an outer passage, commanded a view of the interior. The vis- itor, looking very innocent, appears to be reading the titles of the books ; but the mys- tery is soon solved. The poor wretch, think- ing as little of the eye that watched him as sinners do of the eye of God, after looking round to see that the coast is clear, pulls a vol- ume from the shelf to drop it into a capacious pocket ; the process is repeated and repeated, till the pockets are full. And now, when the craft is loaded and about to sail, my informant comes forth. He arrests him. The thief pro- PLEAS FOR RAGCrED SCHOOLS. lU tests, but in vain. He is committed to a po- lice-officer ; bis address is taken, and in bis house— a good one— among a great deal of stolen property, tbey find a regularly kept day- book. Here tbey see tbe books be bas pur- loined all duly entered. Eacb day bas a page or more for its own transactions ; on sucb a day, for example, "Robinson Crusoe," " Drelin- court on Deatb," "Tbe Newgate Calendar," " Law's Serious Call," " Gulliver's Travels," " Tbe Pilgrim's Progress •/' in one column tbe ordinary selling-price appears, in anotber tbe price be got ; it is, in fact, as regular a jour- nal as Rotbschild's, or any in tbe Bank of England. I know not wbetber tbis person bad received a professional education ; but, as tbere are medical scbools for doctors, and commercial academies for mercbants, tbieving is systemati- cally taugbt in some of our large towns. One boy, for instance, gives tbis account of bim- self : " His fatber was a soldier, and died wben be was very young, leaving bis motber unpro- vided for. Tbe only means of ber support 172 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, was obtained by begging in the streets. She died about nine years ago. James, conse- quently, was left very young without any one to look after him ; he soon fell among thieves, and was taken to Wentworth street, in White- chapel, to a house where he was boarded and lodged for six months, when he was taught to pick pockets. He says that there were twenty more boys kept, beside himself, for the same purpose, by a man and woman who lived by their plunder. Daily the woman dressed her- self, put a bell in her pocket, also a purse con- taining 6d. ; any of the pupils who could take the purse from her pocket without causing the bell to tinkle, got the 6d. as a reward for his dexterity. He remained until he was a profi- cient pickpocket." The extent to which this education is car- ried may be judged of by the details furnished by one who was engaged in this shocking occu- pation. He said " He had been twenty years living a criminal life, and had been twenty times in prison. He resided in a low lodging- house, where he carried on his craft of train- PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 173 iiig voung lads to steal. The best hands amoag them were sent into the streets, and they brought liome the plunder, on which the criminal scliool lived. He was too well known to the police to dare to go out himself. ' But,' said he, ' I never can keep the young 'uns long, for as soon as I have made them clever at their profession, if they are not taken by the police they leave me and start for themselves ; so that I am obliged to look out for new hands.' Being asked how many lads he supposed he had trained to be thieves during the twenty years, he replied that he had kept no account, and he could not exactly tell ; but of this he was sure, that it was not less than five hundred J* What an argument these cases furnish foi Ragged Schools ! Are we to leave these un- happy children to be regularly trained to crime, and then imprison, banish, and hang tliem when they commit it ? Their blood is on our heads if we do ; nor will it excuse us to say, "Am I my brother's keeper ?" It ouglit to make us ashamed of ourselves, that while this hoary ruffian had trained five hundred 1.5* 174 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR, children to a life of crime, we, perhaps, never took the trouble to save one. Tliis business often has enormous success. Three or four hundred pounds is not an un- common income ; and yet, though that is a handsome living, paying no Income Tax, the annual gains of some are far greater — one fam- ily of coiners in England having cleared in a few years not less than twenty thousand pounds. The money which our criminal pop- ulation spend on their vices proves indeed that, as a class, their gains far exceed the wages of our honest workmen. The amount of which they plunder others, without enriching them- selves, may be conjectured from an astounding fact, stated by a committee of the inhabitants of Liverpool to the first Birmingham Associa- tion. According to their report, the annual depredations of all kinds in Liverpool alone amounted in value to £700,000. If the plun- der in that one city amounts to nearly one million of money, how many millions does the whole country lose by crimes it has never taken the proper way to cure ? PLEAS FOR RA(JGEr) SCHOOLS. 175 Whether it be better to establish Ragged Schools, and thereby cut off a great source of crime, or to have thieves levying such enor- mous revenues as appear in the following ta- bles, let the public judge. Here are some spec- imens of the incomes which thieves make, and the loss which the community suffers ; — 1. Richard Clarke, during a career of 6 years, £2820 2. John Clarke, 11 5 it 500 3. Edward Clarke, (( 3 it 1650 4. Ellen Clarke, (O'Neill) (t H (( 1550 5. John O'Neill, (t 9 ti 1450 6. Thomas O'Gar, i( 6 u 300 7. James O'Brien, (i H n 1400 8. Thomas M'Giverin, it 1 II 1900 9. Thomas Kelty, t( 20 (( 8000 10. John Flanagan, {< 14 II 5800 11. John Thompson, (C 6 i( 1800 12. John Bohanna, II 6 ti 1500 13. J. Shawe, u 3 t( 600 14. W. Buckley, u 7 II 2100 15. Sarah Dickenson, u 3 II 630 £32,000 But let us fix our attention on one individual of this group ; let it be Flanagan. He was seventeen times in prison, and caught fifteen times besides, but discharged for want of evi- 1*76 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, dence. In 1850 lie got to the end of his tether and was at length transported. Here are his transactions during three years ; and the ta- bles, be it observed, do not include any sums under £10, although he stated that these con- siderably exceeded those above that sum : — 1838 and 1839. Value. Where robbery committed. From whom. £20 Concert Liverpool . . A gentleman. 15 Theatre, Liverpool . . A gentleman. 11 Zoological Gardens . . A lady. 30 Coach-office. Liverpool . Proprietors. 46 Auction, Broughton Road A lady. 30 Auction, Cheetham Hill A lady. 15 Auction, Pendleton 21 Manchester . . 50 Manchester . . 1 1 Leek, Strafford . 85 Hanley Races 49 Northallerton Fair 12 Liverpool Packet 18 Liverpool Packet 30 Liverpool Packet 45 Ilorncastle Fair . 17 Leeds Fair • . . A lady. A till from a liquor-vault. A till from a public-house. A shopkeeper. A gentleman. A drunken farmer. A passenger. A passenger. A passenger. A lady. A butcher. 1840 and 184L 10 Lincoln Fair .... A gentleman. 14 Lincoln Fair . . . Captain of a boat 10 Spalding Fair .... A farmer. 11 Horncastlo Fai. . . A maltster. PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 1T7 Value. Where robbery committed. From whom. £10 Liverpool Races ... A gentleman. 16 Liverpool Races ... A farmer. 1 7 Chester Races .... A lady. 11 Manchester Races . . A lady. 1841 and 1842. 10 Manchester Theatre . . A lady. 70 Bury Fair A cattle-dealer. 250 In the street at Manchester An officer. 15 Knutsford Races ... A jockey. 30 Doucaster Races ... A publican. 18 Nottingham Races . . A butcher. 14 Derby Races .... Unknown. 1 3 Crowle, Lincoln ... A publican's wife. 12 Caister. Lincoln ... A farmer. 11 Market Raisin . . . A gentleman's servant. 60 Brigg Fair A farmer's wife. 21 Louth, Lincolnshire . . A coachman. &c. &c. &c How cheap it were to prevent crime, com- pared with the cost either of maintaining or of punishing it ! It is hard to say whether our folly or extravagance has been most conspicu- ous. Committed to jail, and maintained there in a state of comparative ease and idleness, the felon lives in some respects like a gentleman. Why, such a sum of money was spent in biiilding York Jail that the lodging alone for 178 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, each prisoner there is equal to an annual houF« rent of £40. Every criminal in jail costs the country, at an average, £30 or £40 a year ; and while honest men have to eat their bread in the sweat of their Ijrow, these, as if the most meritorious members of society, are found in coal, candles, food, clothes, and lodging. With what advantage? The system has proved a greater waste than pouring water on a sand- bed — the culprit has gone in a bad man, and comes out a worse. Contrast with this system that which, in old times, obtained among the Jews. Apart from its divine character, how wise the legislatioK of Moses ! A Hebrew, for example, stole at ox ; what then ? They did not throw him into jail to herd with congenial rogues ; or to pine in idle solitude ; or to fret at the weary crank — a wretched device, which, turning nothing but an index, is enough to turn the sweetest temper into gall and bitterness. Still less, by the execution of a sentence out of all propor- tion to the offence, did they commit murder in the name of law, and hang him up like a dog PLEAS FOR RAvJfJKD SCHOOLS. 179 that worries sheep. In tliis case paying the penalty was no figure of speech. By way of punishment he was required to pay four times the value of the ox ; thus the injured person was amply compensated, while none were tempt- ed to suffer wrong rather than convict the wrong-doer ; for most people will feel that the loss to them of a few pounds is only made the greater by knowing tliat the man who took them is to be hanged. But what if the culprit had not tlie wherewithal to meet his punish- ment, the money to pay tlie price of four oxen ? Mosaic law provided for this, condemning him to work as a temporary slave till he had earned the full amount. Now, look at the results! In the first place, the injured party suffered in the end no wrong, having the full value of what he had lost repaid ; secondly, the country had to bear no burden, the criminal having to maintain himself during the time of his punish- ment ; thirdly, the thief himself, if idle and useless prior to his offence, became, ere he had atoned for it, a skilled, industrious workman. If we read our Bibles to better purpose, we 180 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OB, would neither treat our decent poor so harshly, nor manage our criminals so foolishly. We have thousands of the latter class, though not as in former days, rioting, or rotting in jails, lying there in comparative idleness. Why are they not turned out to build harbors of refuge ; to make roads ; to drain the land ? Enclosed within a cordon militaire and employ- ed on such works, we would get some good out of them ; and better still, they themselves brought into a healthy condition both of body and mind, and trained to regular habits of industry, might become, so soon as the term of their sentence was fulfilled, useful citizens either at home or in the colonies. We would thus relieve ourselves of a great burden, and bestow on them a greater boon. But prevention is better than cure ; and so we now ask, Why should not Ragged Schools be applied like the salt of Elisha to the fountains of crime — the springs of the cursed and bitter waters ? Three hundred pounds is the average cost for each criminal before the country has done with them, and that is usually PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 181 when they are dead ; liow much better at the cost of merely thirty pounds — all that is needed for the full education and maintenance of a child at a Ragged School — to save them from ever entering on a life of crime ? The numbers required year by year to recruit the ranks of criminals gives unspeakable importance to that question. The average period of their career is short, not extending beyond five or six years ; and it is calculated that not fewer than twenty thousand annually are enlisted into this deviFs regiment. The greater part of these are children. This opens up a dreadful view ; and I should fail in my duty if I did not state broadly that most of those children owe their ruin to drink — to the dissipated habits of their parents, intemperance is the horrid Moloch, tlie ugly olood-stained idol to which so many young victims are annually sacrificed. Drunkenness, directly or indirectly, supplies our Ragged Schools with scholars, our jails with prisoners, and our poor-houses with by much the largest number of their tenants. In England, the 16 182 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OB, portals to these are gin palaces and beer-shops ) in Scotland, are whisky and dram-shops. But for this vice, we should have no rags, nor Rag- ged Schools, in our cities ; few paupers to lodge in poor-houses ; and many of our prisons, like one I found in an old burgh in Fife, sound- ing merrily to the music of feet and fiddle, might be turned into dancing-schools. Talk of oui weakness as a nation ! The foreigner put hih finger on it who said. It is a blessed thing that you Anglo-Saxons are a drunken race ; } ou had otherwise conquered the whole world. Talk of our burdens as a nation ! The people j^roan under no taxes to be compared with those which, by the consumption of wine beer, and whisky, they impose upon themselves The voice of our prisons is, that drinking is th(' chief cau>"je of crime ; our judges have arrived at the same conclusion, and repeatedly express- ed it from the seat of justice ; and, however much they differ on points of theology, on this subject ministers and city missionaries of all denomincdons are of the same opinion. And it is inst/uctive to observe that drinking is the PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 183 great spring of crime in those parts of the continent where the habits of the people ap- proach our own. It was stated the other day for example, by Lord Brougham, on the authority of Obermeyer, the well-known and enlightened governor of the prison in Munich, that there and in Baden almost every crime was traceable to intemperance — to the use, or as some would say, the abuse of beer and wine. I will not enter on the question whether Scotland is a more drunken country than Eng- land. With all its drunkenness, I will not de- ny my country. I would find that perhaps asj useless as did an Irishman of my acquaintance He had a touch of the brogue, yet so boldl} claimed to be an 'Englishman, as to silence if not convince us. Unfortunately for him, an Irifih lady who lived in our pension in Paris, had not forgotten, though slie had resided long in France, the habits of her country. Fixing her keen grey eyes on him one day at dinner, she said, " I know you, sir, to be an Irishman'* — choking the lie in his throat by this charac- teristic, and to the English and Scotch part of 184 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR, the company, most diverting reason, " I know it, sir, by the way you peel your potato I" T could not if I would deny my country ; and I would not if I could deny its crimes, since the way to cure evil is to expose it. Still, as late Government returns demonstrate, the amount of drinking in Scotland has been grossly exag- gerated ; and it would not be difficult to prove that drunkenness is as great a curse on the south as on the north side of the Border. It is but fair to both countries, however, to re- mark that a large proportion of what appear to be our crimes, is due to Irish Roman Catho- lics— their presence among us making us ap- pear much lower in the scale of morality than we would otherwise do. L*'5ok, for example, at this extract from the Police Tables of Liver- pool, from Sept., 1858, to Sept., 1859. Its Irish inhabitants are, of course, far fewer than its English population, yet observe how the fol- lowing offences committed by them are almost equal in number to those committed by the whole English inhabitants of that great Eng- lish town : — PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHUOLS. 185 By English. By Irislu Assaults on women and children, .... Ill 86 " '* on peace officers, 5G2 494 ' ' common 824 661 Drunkenness, and drunk and disorderly 4912 4080 Larceny under value of 5s., 784 836 I consider it as one of the most promising signs of our age, that the public are now com- ing to regard intemperance as a gigantic evil. Should they not ? It can be proved to demon- stration, that every shop opened for the mere purpose of drinking, whether wine, beer, or spirits, is injurious to the ivell-heing of society ; is not only a public-house but a public nui- Bance. The wonder is, that our country has so long tolerated a system whereby a few build up fortunes out of the wreck and utter ruin of many. Indeed, I am surprised at good, excel- lent, pious Christians continuing to lend the influence of their example to the use of such stimulants ; knowing as they do, that these ruin, have ruined, and will continue to ruin, not once for all, but year by year, the happi- ness, and homes, and bodies, and souls of thou- sands. They destroy the peace of so many IG* 186 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OB, families, and doom so many children to starva- tion and rags ; they drive so many poor girls to the streets, and so often blight the fairest blossoms of youth ; they break so many lov- ing hearts, and bring so many grey heads with sorrow to the grave, that I have felt con- strained to say, I will drink none of them while the world standeth, lest I make a broth- er to offend. It is due to the cause of Total Abstinence to add, that while in joining its ranks, I sought only the public good, I hav« found my own in four personal advantages — stronger health, a clearer head, a lighter heart, and a heavier purse. While the dissipated habits of many create that supply of juvenile delinquents which keeps the number of our criminals, these, trained by their parents, or forced by circum- stances into a life of crime, are far more de- serving of pity than of austere punishment. One of our annual reports thus describes their condition : — Found homeless, and provided with lodgings, 72 Children with both parents dead, 33 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 187 With the father dead, 140 Mother dead, ^* Deserted by parents, *^ With one or both parents transported, 9 Fatherless, with drunken mothers, 77 Motherless, with drunken fathers, 68 With both parents worthless, 84 Who have been beggars ^' l Who have been in the Police Office, 75 Who have been in Prison, 20 Known as children of Thieves, 76 Believed to be so, including the preceding, 148 I'Ms is a modern edition of the prophet'3 re II, written within and without, with " lamen- tation, and mourning, and woe." Though a lady had once the politeness to ask me whether I invented my stories, these, be assured, are facts, not fancies. How do they appeal to your pity, and recommend our schools,— the only hope they have, that are ready to perish ? formerly all these children found their way to the jail. No man cared for their souls, or commiserated their condition. Banishing what it did not hang, the country shipped off thou- sands to rot and fester in our colonies, till these, rising as one man, declared that they would have no more of our refuse and waste ; 188 SEED-TIME AXD HARVEST; OR, that, if we would grow criminals, we should keep them. Many seemed born for the gal- lows, and coolly calculated on being hanged, — as sailors do on being drowned, or soldiers, in time of war, on being shot. I happened once to find them at their rehearsals. They had a ragged urchin suspended by a rope thrown over the door-lintel of an old house. The noose was dexterously placed under his arm-pits ; but the way he hung his head, and mimicked the dying spasms, drew up his legs, and kicked, was perfect. So thought his com- panions. The young savages danced round him in wildest glee, and greeted each kick with roars of laughter. They were familiar with hanging ; nor much wonder, since New gate, for instance, used to show ten or a dozea old ruffians with boys, strung up like vermin, and slowly turning round in the morning air, with their white caps, — waiting to be cut down. Horrible sight ! Before showing how Eagged Schools — bet- ter every way than hanging, banishing, or im- prisoning— have met the evils of society, let PLEAS FOR RACfiED SCHOOLS. 189 US glance at the statistics of juvenile criminals in England. They are very appalling. The number of juvenile offenders committed in one year was not less than 15,507 ; and in another year 11,420. Of these, one only had received a superior education ; and of the whole 11,420 there were only 196 who could read and write well ; and since such a smattering of educa- tion as leaves a man unable to read with ease is, for all practical purposes, no better, in nine- ty-nine cases out of a hundred, than no educa- tion wliatever, out of 11,410 juvenile delin- quents, there were in fact 11,223 who may be said not to have been educated at all. What a disgrace to the nation ! And what right had society to come down with its vengeance on those it had so shamefully neglected ? Now, to show how Ragged Schools meet this evil, and furnish the best cure for crime— the cheapest, most humane, and holiest remedy — look at the effect of our school on the pris- on I It is very remarkable. As the rooms of the school filled, the cells of the prison emp- tied. Our increase was their decrease. The 190 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, stream flowing into the jail grew less and less, and it was plain to everybody that we liad struck one great spring — and were drain- iu,o- it off. Here are the returns furnished by Mr. Smith, the excellent governor of our jail. Our school was opened in the summer of 1847, but could not tell much, of course, on the re- turns of that year. \" In 1847 the centesimal proportion of children under 14 years of age in prison was 1848 3.7 1849 2.9 1850 1.3 1851 9 1858 1.7 1859 1.2 There has been also a remarkable decrease in tlie commitments of prisoners from 14 to 16 years of age. Tlie number of prisoners between 14 and 16 years of age was, in 1848 653 1849 440 1850 361 1851 ....... 227 1858 138 1859 130 These returns demonstrate the success of ouv PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. VM schools ; since, in the short space of four years, we reduced the commitments of juveniles to one-tenth part of what tliey were before the schools were opened : and what variation ap- pears in these returns down to the present time, only proves the necessity of a more ex- tended application of our system. It may be regarded as a work of supererogation, yet I add the testimony borne by the head of our police. He says, " I cannot too strongly ex- press my sense of the value and importance of the Ragged Schools, as one of the principal means of ameliorating the condition of desti- tute and outcast children, and rescuing them from those evil influences, which, if unchecked, nmst necessarily tend to make them hardened criminals. Being fully persuaded that tlie ex- tended operation of such a system is the most likely agency for arresting the alarming prog- ress of crime in our large towns, I cannot but state my earnest conviction that on grounds both of humanity and expediency the Ragged Schools have the highest possible claim on the public for continued and increased support. 192 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, It is very satisfactory to know that all the Ragged Schools in Scotland show correspond- ing results. And though the system of Rag- ged, Feeding, and Industrial Schools has not been so fully applied in England, yet there also the effect of these, or of kindred institu- tions, has attracted the attention of the public authorities. In a speech, for instance, deliv- ered lately by the Chairman of the Sessions for the West Riding of Yorkshire, he noticed the marked decrease of crime, and attributed it to the fact, that " a large number of little boys, instead of being now available as assist- ants to bigger thieves, are lodged within the walls of Reformatories or Ragged Schools." Like the Hebrew High-Priest, arrayed in sacred vestments, and holding aloft the smok- ing censer, we have stood between the living and the dead, and have stayed the plague. We have arrested the waters that were descend- ing headlong into that Dead Sea, on whose arid shore no green thing grows, in whose wa- ters no creature lives, to whose dark bosom the stream runs in but not a drop runs out ; not PLEAS FOR RAPaiRD SCHOOLS. Kt6 only so, but we have turned them aside to bless and fertilize the land. We have stayed the progress of crime. Leaving others to wear blood-stained laurels, and boast of tliousands slain in battle, we esteem ourselves happier ; we point to thousands plucked from the jaws of ruin and saved for society — not a few of them, we trust, for God and heaven. For these schools, therefore, as a means of checking the course of crime, of turning wretchedness into happiness, vice into virtue, a nation's weakness into a nation's strength, and public burdens into public blessings, I claim the eulogium of Holy Writ : " Many daughters have done vir- tuously, but thou excellest them all." III. By means of Ragged Schools, thousands of miserable children have been turned into happy and valuable members of society. " Understandest what thou readest ?" the question which Philip put to the Ethiopian is one I keep in view on occasional visits to the Ragged School. The words, " l)ed of down," occurred one day in the lesson. I asked their meaning. The children knew little of " down ;' 194 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, to soft beds, soft words, soft endearments, they had been strangers till we took them into our arms. They were fairly puzzled ; though sharp as needles, and very precocious — a well-marked feature of creatures whose wits are sharpened at a too early age, on the hard grindstone of necessity. At length a bright idea struck one little fellow. His eye gleamed with triumph, and, sure of vaulting to the top of the class, he blurted out, in case any one should antici- pate him, " Bed of down, sir, bed of down is a bed on the floor !" Poor child ! it was all h€ knew of it. There Avas more of real misery than Irish wit in that answer. Would that all mothers, when they bless and kiss their little ones snugly wrapt in cosy cot, thought of those who are more familiar with blows than blessings ; never knew a mother's love ; get more curses than caresses ; and lie down, many a night, shivering and hungry on the naked floor. How much human misery is unveiled, and what a touching appeal is made to our kind compassions, for instance, by this fact ! Some PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 195 years, measles broke out in our school. Domi- ciliary visits were paid to the sufferers ; and of fifty-five cases there were but three where we found even the vestige of a bed. Of these lit- tle sufferers, fifty-two had no bed-clothes but their body rags, nor couch but the bare hard boards of tlie floor. Our dogs and cats liave comforts whicli Christian men and women withhold from their fellow-creatures. And how peopl'e, not flint-hearted, who hear of such facts, and see these children prowling haggard, hungry, and wolf-like about the streets, can bend their way home to " eat the fat and drink the sweet," nor give a sigli to this mis- ery, or a sixpence to these wants, is to me a mystery. Calling tlicmselves followers of Jesus, in the sympathies of his nature they are not so. Kind and blessed Lord ! he had tears for all human suftering. He made himself poor that he might make others rich — witli- holding neither his love nor his life-blood. Surely many forget that Self-Denial, not Self- indulgence, is the motto of our faith. Since the days when, helmed for battle with men or 196 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OR, monsters, brave knights rode forth from castle gates to right the wrongs of the oppressed, sharing their loaf and dividing their cloak in winter among miserable wretches, more than chivalry seems gone. One would sometimes think that Christianity herself was dead, and mute the voice which said, " Is not this the fast which I have chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry ; and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house ; when thou seest the naked that thou cover him ; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh ?" Our schools are nothing else than a practi- cal application of these rules — the rules of a Book which teaches you that by the very test to which we are submitting them, you shall yourselves be tried. And woe to the man who, on trial for his life at the bar of a right- eous God, shall have to face as accusers one, and another, and another, that joint to him, saying, " I was an hungered, and he gave me no meat ; I was thirsty, and he gave me no drink ; I was a stranger, and he took me not in ; naked, and he clothed me not ; sick, and PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 197 in prison, and lie visited me not." Then shall Jesus say, " Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." God forbid that I should judge any ! Only I cannot comprehend the humanity of the man who stands on a stormy beach with a wre<;k before him, drowning wretches hanging in its shrouds, their pitiful cries wafted to his ears, their imploring hands stretched out for help, and who does not, I don't say leap into the life-boat when gallant men are calling for an- other hand, but who does not regard tliis dreadful scene otherwise than with cold indif- ference. Nor do I understand the religion of the man or woman who does nothing to save poor boys from a fate worse than shipwreck, and young girls from one worse than twenty deaths. Death ! The life of crime befo re them, should they survive the cold, and hunger, and neglect, under which they sink by thou- sands into an early grave, is sucli that I have been thankful to see them dead ; lying in tlicir rude coffins ; safe in God's arms ; away from the brutal father, whose staggering step and 17* 198 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST : OR boisterous voice, that poor, pale, peaceful form no more trembles to hear. It was an awful thing to see a mother who hung over her sick boy's couch, and fondly kissed him, drop on her knees and passionately pray to God that he might never rise from that bed, but die — die there. No wonder. Eleven summers had gone over that young head, yet life had been all bit- ter winter to him. He had been starved by a drunken father ; driven on the street, forced into crime. None of all who went to church wrapped up in comforts, Bible or Prayer-book in hand, had cared for him, poor wretch ! He had to steal, or starve ; do wrong, or die. He has been thrice in jail. And seeing no pros- pect for him but the cold hands of the hang- man working about that young neck, no great wonder his mother wished him dead — willing rather to trust him to the mercy of her God than to what they call the justice of men. Think of the miseries that wring such prayers from a mother's lips ! and hasten to our help — to the help of the Lord against the mighty ! Now, of all means. Ragged Schools offer PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 199 the surest, shortest way to an end devoutly to be wished for. Prisons and punishment are acknowledged failures ; so are street alms, so is casual charity, whatever shape it assumes. In too many instances it feeds, not the children, but the vices which are their ruin ; and thus exasperates the misery which benevolence seeks to relieve. Here is the way we treat the case. These children, as I have already stated in my Sec- ond Plea, come to our school in the morning, and do not leave us till evening. Those whose homes are so cruel or so vicious that they would certainly suffer from passing the night there, sleep within our walls. In the words of Count de Metz, the founder of the celebra- ted school of Mettray, " We go to the work with the gospel in our hands ;" our highest object being to train them in the knowledge of divine truth — in the fear and love of God. They receive a good secular education, and are brought up also to industrial occupations. The girls learn to sew, to knit, to wash, to cook ; while the boys are trained up as tailors, shoe- UOO SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, makers, and boxmakers, or carpenters. In our country establishment, within a mile of Edinburgh, we teach them to handle the axe, the hoe, and the spade, fitting them for emigra- tion or rural labors. So much time, each day, is allotted for play. Every morning they go through their ablutions with Eastern precision; and to ensure regular attendance, as well as meet the necessities of their poverty, they re- ceive three substantial meals each day. Pun- ishments are rare. We work by love and kindness ; and, though on entering our school they were foul as the gutter out of which they had been plucked, unbroken as the wild Arab or wild ass of the desert, ignorant of every- thing that is good, rags on their backs and misery in their looks ; such change comes over them that better-behaved scholars, sharper in- tellects, happier faces, you will see nowhere. Talk of Rarey, the celebrated horse breaker ! we accomplish feats that outshine his. I re- member one day seeing a child just brought in from the Police Office. It was a little lean, withered, old looking creature ; lost in a gown PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 201 made for a grown-up woman ; her head buried in a large, faded, coal scuttle-shaped bonnet, the relic of a by-gone fashion, at the far end of which one could see a wild, woe-begone face. Poor soul, it was plain that she had never been at school before ; she sat amazed, still as a post, as if her queer, stunted figure had been cut out of stone ; nothing about her looked alive, but the two grey eyes which went rolling round and round in blank amaze. She had all the look of a newly-caught hare, seized in her form. In three weeks you would not have rec- ognized that child. What a marvellous change do the allied powers of patience and porridge work ! These creatures gradually lose their savage air ; the sharp angularities of starva- tion get beautifully rounded off in fat and flesh ; health blooms on the rosy check ; and the hangdog, cunning, low, suspicious look gives place to an honest bearing, and an open, cheerful countenance. There are not a few very pretty children in our school ; and as to the girls, with their industrial training, they are more fit to be skilful, frugal wives, to mend 202 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR their man's coat, to darn his stockings, to dress liis linen, to cook his food, and keep a tidy house and clean fireside, than lasses with gay ribbons and more pretensions. Such are the children within our school. But what of the fruits of the system as brought out in their future career ? Since our doors were opened in 1847, besides many wlio received a partial education, and not a few whose parents, rising into better circumstan- ces, removed thorn to higher schools, not less than five hundred cliildren have left our walls to play their part in life. They are playing it well. Considering the great disadvantages of their outset in life, we have to state as a marvellous, as well as most gratifying result, that as large a proportion of them have proved honest, industrious, useful members of society as any other class can show. This more than rewards all our anxieties and la- bors ; and cannot be contemplated by any right-minded persons without their heart warm- ing to Ragged Schools. Yon gallant boat that plies between the wreck and the shore, PLEAS FOH UACfJED SCHOOLS. 203 and on which, as she rises to the swell of the sea, all eyes are intently fixed, is but an image of our schools. If our work has not the splendor that surrounds brave deeds, it has a better and more enduring glory. It has saved the perishing from a wreck worse than the stranded ship's — from a fate far worse than the bubbling groan and brief struggle of men whelmed in the deep. It is preeminently a Saviour-like work. We go to seek the lost. And these five hundred children show how Heaven has smiled on our efforts, and what a promising field Ragged Schools open up for Christian benevolence ! Nowhere can labor and money count with such certainty on meet- ing with a sure reward. It seems like lowering a noble cause to in- troduce the consideration of money, and plead for it on the score of economy. It is a great stoop from the lofty heights of Religion, Pity, Humanity, Justice, and Mercy, to come down to pounds, shillings, and pence. Yet I can demonstrate that ours, the kindest and holiest, is the cheapest policy. It has been, as I have 204 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, already stated, calculated that every child left to grow up a criminal, costs the country, on an average, not less than three hundred pounds. Let us suppose then that but one half of these five hundred, whom this single school has saved, had run a career of crime ; they would have involved the State in an outlay of seventy-five thousand pounds. Now, during the twelve years of its existence, our school has cost some £24,000 ; the amount, therefore, saved to the country is just the difference between that sum and £75,000— that is, £51,000. But make the much more probable supposition that at least two-thirds of these children would, but for our school, have developed into full-blown crimi- nals, then, besides rescuing them from a life of crime and misery, we have saved the State in actual money, a sum, in round figures, equal to the difference between £24,000 and £96,000. With that fact before them, a saving in twelve years of £72,000 effected by this one benev- olent institution, were our Governments and Parliaments wise, and not, to use a common proverb, penny wise and pound foolish. Rag- PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 205 ged Schools would be regarded as having the foremost claim on the public funds. They would be made to cover, as a network, all the wretched districts of the large cities of our land. Seventy-two thousand golden sovereigns, fresh from the Mint, piled up in a glittering heap, on the floor of our school, represents the money gain accruing to the country from the opera- tion of our school. A sight this enough to dazzle the eyes and win the patronage of a Chancellor of the Exchequer ; yet some three years ago, I saw its golden harvests gath- ered on that floor after a nobler fashion. Many of our children, on completing their education, have gone forth to the ends of the earth. Some are in Canada, felling the for- est ; some in New Zealand and Australia are tending flocks : some have fought in the Cri- mea, and some in battles on the deep. Besides those who had gone abroad as emigrants. or entered the army or navy, we knew that a goodly number of them were, with erect and honest bearing, walking the streets where they 18 206 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR. once prowled — outcasts and beggars. So, about three years ago, when constituents were giving banquets to their members, and joyous cities were feasting the heroes of the Russian war, we resolved to pay some honor to those who, in their own field, had had as hard a fight and as difficult a part to play. Cards of invi- tation were accordingly issued to such of our old scholars as we could find in town. The fete came off about Christmas time. We did the thing handsomely. Our largest room was brilliantly lighted ; ivy, branches of laurel, and blooming flowers festooned the walls ; while long tables groaned under ample stores of coffee, tea, cookies, buns, and cakes of all sorts. It fell to me, as a kind of head of the house, to do the honors. The hour of recep- tion arrived. The tread and shuffling of many feet rose on the stairs. The living stream set in — a constant succession of sober, well-to-do like young men and women, with all of whom, of course, I heartily shook hands ; wives, once Ragged School girls, were there, with blushes and honest pride, introducing their husbands PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 207 to me ; and husbands, once Ragged School boys, their wives. A.11 were well, and some even genteelly dressed ; without a rag on their backs, or trace of wretcliedness in their bright and happy faces ; self-supporting ; upright ; earning by honest industry wages that ranged from the three or four shillings a week of the apprentice boy to the thirty or forty shillings of the skilled workman, shopman, or clerk. It was a marvellous sight. Old neighbors were astounded at the sad change time had wrought upon Naomi. On seeing the widow bend her steps along the streets of Bethlehem, grey with age, poorly clad, and stooping beneath a load of grief and poverty, they could hardly believe their eyes ; but held up their hands to cry, " Is this Nao- mi ?" I was ready, for opposite reasons, to ask, " Are these my Kagged School children ? The Lord hath done great things for us ; where- of we are glad." They were a hundred and fifty in all. What happy faces they wore ! How joyous to meet again within those walls? With nothing stronger than tea and coifee, how 208 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, their spirits rose to the highest pitch ; and what a merry ring was in their laugh. What heartiness in their fun ; and also in their feed- ing I How some of them did enjoy them- selves ! One of my daughters, who presided at a table, told me of a boy who drank an ocean of tea, ten cups at the least. The even- ing flew away on lightsome wings — songs were sung ; good counsels given ; prayers were of- fered and blessings asked. We lingered over the scene. Nor could I look on that gathering of young men and women — so respectably clad, and wearing such an air of decency — and think what, but for the Ragged School, they would have been, without tears of joy — gratitude to God, full to overflowing. It was a sight worth living for. It was our harvest home. " Our joy was according to the joy of harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil." Such are Ragged Schools. Trees of life, let them be planted in every city — their leaves are for the healing of the people. In drawing this appeal to a close, let me re- mark tliat while there is no machinery so well PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 209 fitted ultimately to raise the lowest classes, (lie classes dangereuses of our large cities, there are few even of our small towns tliat do not need a Ragged, Feeding, Industrial School. Nor should benevolent people wait until the school, with its rooms, and staff of teachers, and board of directors, is set up. There is a quiet way of reaching our object, of saving the lost, in which many might engage who are idly wasting their time and .talents. None of us liveth to himself; no man or woman should. Yet, in this country, what an immense amount of female power is latent — lost to God and to the world ! I know a person in a humble posi- tion— she is a blacksmith's wife — who, sparing some hours each day for the work, has edu- cated not a few of the neglected children of the village where she resides. Her name, though unknown to fame, is known in heaven , and, better than on gold or marble, is graven on loving hearts. How many ladies there are, who, treading in her humble footsteps, could change a languid into a bright, happy, blessed life I In this world of sin and misery time 18* 210 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OB, ought not to be wasted on trifles ; and need hang heavy on no one's hands. What i? to hinder many in circumstances of ease and com- parative affluence, to collect some half-dozen neglected children into a room, and, spread- ing before them one plain meal, devote three hours each day to their education ? These well-spent hours, like drops of oil spreading on the waters, would diffuse themselves in bless- ings and pleasure over all the day. Our is- land has one Miss Nightingale and one Miss Marsh, and others of kindred spirit though less known to fame ; it might have thousands from their modest shades filling the land with music, and winning for their names the honor of household words in the abodes of woe and wretchedness. If these ladies, by God's bless- ing, have subdued and softened man in his roughest state, what might others accomplish with plastic childhood in gentle hands ? I address myself once more to the public — to people with heads to understand and hearts to feel. We went to the Government for aid ; and notwithstanding the sympathy of the min- PLEAS FOR llAGGEJ) SCHOOLS. 211 isters of state, somehow or other, by the inter- ference probably of officials, it was like going down to Egypt for help. We have leaned up- on a broken reed. The public purse whicli supples an affluent stream to those schools that educate the children of the reputable and well- doing part of tlie community, strange to say, yields to our Ragged Schools nothing but the merest dribble. Those that should be first are put last, and the last are first. While the child of the artisan, the shopkeeper, the manufac- turer, the merchant, is, to a considerable extent, educated from the public funds of the country, this wretched creature, with pinching hunger in its face, foul rags on its back, its naked, red, ulcerated feet on the icy street, and in the damp cellar or cold garret where it lives, nei- ther bed nor Bible, comfort nor kindness, gets nothing from our public funds V)ut a niggardly pittance. It is cruel injustice. Talk of class legislation ! What class legislation so bad as this ? For a l)rief period, in answer to impor- tunity like the widow's, we got fifty sliillings a year for ^very child of the abandoned classes 212 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST; OB, trained within our school — only one third of the cost. But now, and all in a day, this fifty shillings has been reduced to five. Five shil- lings in the year comes to about half a farthing in the day ; and so half a farthing a day is the encouragement and help we get toward saving a hapless, helpless creature from crime, the prison, the hangman. Munificent donation ! Incredible mockery as this seems, such is the fact. I am not aware that there is anything to match it in any department of public affairs. Its injustice and folly are still more plainly brought out by the contrast between the liber- ality shown to those institutions which attempt to reform the child who has committed crime, and the niggardliness dealt out to such insti- tutions as ours, that reckoning prevention bet- ter than cure, seek to destroy crime in the very bud. As if cure were better than preven- tion ; as if physic w ere better than food ; as if it were an advantage to a boy or a girl to bear the jail brand ; as if the prison were an admirable school of spotless virtue, true honor, honest industry, and Christian piety, PLEAS FOR R ACHED SCHOOLS. 213 tliey allow seven or eight shillings a week for every child whom the public leaves to grow up into a criminal, and to find its way into a pris- on. To the man who, like a fool, postpones education till the child falls into crime, and is brought out of the jail to school, the Govern- ment gives one shilling per day ; and to the far wiser man who, catching the child, so to speak, on its way to the prison, by education destroys crime in the bud and germ, the Gov- ernment grants but one half-farthing per day. What a monstrous state of matters ! It is high time that it were put an end to. We hope that the heads of Government will see to it — and that the country will instruct its repre- sentatives to see to it ! We have sinned in time past against these children, punishing innocence ; and in worth- less, wicked parents we have allowed guilt go free. We have punished those whom we should have pitied ) and committed those to prison whom we should have sent to school. I hold it to be a primary duty of the State to see that every child within its bounds is educated, and 214 SEED-TIME AND HARVEST ; OR, that none be allowed to bring up their chil- dren in savage, dangerous ignorance. If pa- rents are willing but not able to educate them, let that be done at the public expense. If they are able but not willing, let the law compel tliem to do their duty. No man is at liberty in this land to starve his child's body, and the interests of society imperatively require that he should not be left at liberty to starve its mind, and bring up his family so as to make them a burden, a danger, and a curse to th« community. It is a great wrong to leave a child uneducated, and a still greater wrong to punish it for crimes which are not its guilt but ours — the infallible consequence of our crim- inal neglect. Tlie day was when they shut up such chil- dren in prison with hardened ruffians, or im- mured them in lonely cells to pine away the sweet spring-time of life where they heard no birds sing, nor saw the Ijlue sky, nor the bless- ed sunshine. In the last century they did worse. From the grim door of a prison they brought out two children to the scaffold — a PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 215 boy of twelve, and a girl of eleven years of age. Pitiful sight ! two shivering creatures, beneath the black gallows, and the hoary exe- cutioner putting aside their flowing locks, and ])aring their young necks for the rope. Call- ing it justice, they hanged those infants up be- fore the astonished sun ! This shocking murder was done in England in the reign of George II. That was the old system : ours is the new. Our motto, " Prevention is better than cure," and vastly better than punishment. We gladly hail the dawn of a day, when trusting more to schools and less to prisons, the otate shall recognize its duty in this matter. Tiiree hundred years ago, John Knox, our great Scottish Reformer, long one of the most misunderstood and best abused of men, laid it down as the duty of the Government to take care that every child withiji its bounds received a useful education : and one of England's most liberal-minded and profoundest thinkers has lent his high name to the same principle. John Foster advocates notpnly " friendly but rngfid dealing with all the people of inferior condi 216 SEED-TDfE AND HARVEST. tion relatively to the necessity of their practical accordance to plans of education." He treats " with contempt any hypocritical protest against so much interference with the discretion, the liberty of parents — the discretion, the liberty, forsooth, of bringing up their children a nui- sance on the face of the earth." Meanwhile, however, and until the happy day when, without encroaching on the domain of conscience, the State shall secure for every child within its borders a useful education, Ragged Schools offer the only remedy for most claimant evils. Without them thousands are doomed to perish. They were an experiment ; they are a success — a glorious success. May they never cease to flourish, till these lines cease to apply to this great, but guilty land : — "ITie land has groaned beneath the guilt of blood Spilt wantonly ; for every death-doomed man Who, in his boyhood, has been left untaught That Wisdom's w^ys are ways of pleasantness, And all her path? are peace, unjustly dies. But ah 1 how many are thus left untaught I " APPENDIX No. I. SUPPLEMENT TO FIRST PLEA. rpHE "Plea" fell much like a small spark 1 among combustibles, calling forth a very general and lively interest in the welfare of the outcast children of society. For some time after its first publication, every day brought letters expressing sympathy and offering coop- eration. The public were impatient for the organization of a scheme, and a public meeting at which it might be launched. Such a meet- ing, patronized by gentlemen of all ranks and denominations, was at length hehl. Our scheme was launched amid the plaudits of a concourse of spectators ; and while many watched its progress and followed it with their prayers, off it went to save the castaways, tp (217) 218 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. We constructed our scheme after the model of those in Aberdeen and Dundee. These had been in all respects universally approved of ; and it was unanimously carried, without a murmur of disapprobation, far less one dis- senting voice, that our School should be, in the main, modelled after their fashion of these. This accordingly was done ; and in Appendix II., the reader will find the Rules and Consti- tution of our Edinburgh School, as proposed by the Committee, and unanimously adopted by a large meeting of the citizens. For some short while matters went smoothly enough. There was confidence within our Committee, and no cloud without. And the happy, I will say the holy, spectacle was seen of men who had been at war now cultivating the arts of peace, forgetting differences in a common ob- ject, and meeting with swords turned into plowshares, to break up the ground which had long lain fallow. At first we did not attempt much. There was great difiiculty found in procuring suit- able accommodation for the Schools in a cen- APPENDIX 219 tral part of the city.* Besides, tlie objects of our charity, being unaccustomed to subordina- tion, had to be disciplined and broken in. There could not be a greater mistake, or a grosser misrepresentation, than to allege, as was done, that the small number of our schol- ars was owing to any aversion which the Ro- man Catholics felt to participate in the benefits of our School. I was warned against sweeping in an unmanageable number at first, by a cir- cumstance which I heard, when Lord Ashley took me to one of the Ragged Schools in Lon- don. It was situated in Westminster, and had a remarkable history. Some time before it was turned to its present purpose, this building had been used as a tavern. It was the favor- ite rendezvous of the thieves of that district. There they met to plan, and from thence they issued forth to execute, their deeds of crime. Even then, they had a sort of Sabbath-school * 'J'his difficulty has been in a great measure removed through the kindness of the Rev. Mr. Smith and the Kirk- eessioii of the Tolbooth parish, who have in the meantime accommodated us with a large and commodious achool-room at Ramsay Garden, CastlehilL 220 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. in it ; but what a school ! The room was filled with the ruffians and robbers of the neighbor- hood. At one end the younger thieyes, — those who were in training, — pursued the art of pocket-picking. If the lesson was not well- performed, the bungler was apprehended and dragged by a sham policeman to the other end of the room. There, in caricature of a court of justice, sat a presiding ruffian, dressed out in the wig, and gown, and garb of a Judge, by whom, amid all the formalities of the law, the culprit was tried. In the course of this mock assize, he was taught how to fence and evade — when to be silent, and how to speak — so as to prepare him for the time when this farce should pass into a dreadful tragedy. Beneath that very roof where unhappy outcasts had been trained in wickedness and sin, we found a Ragged School in admirable order — filled with the very objects of such a charity. Among oth- ers, we remember two. A boy was pointed out to us, whose bed, during winter, had been the hollow of the iron roller in one of the parks. The other had been brought to the school by APPENDIX. 221 one of the most notorious thieves in the neigh- borhood, who implored tliem to receive tha child as the only means of saving liim from ruin ; adding, when his strange request was granted, and he looked round on the scene, these touching words, " Had tliere Ijeen such a school as this when I was a boy, I had not been a thief." In this, or in another school, the circum- stances happened which were a warning to us against gathering all at once a large number of these neglected and undisciplined children. A school had been opened in another and very wild and wicked part of London. When a considerable number of boys had been brought together, the teacher ordered them, if I re- member aright, to produce the books with which they had previously been furnished. Each of them put his hand into his pocket, and produced, not a book, but a tobacco-pipe. He remonstrated. Tliey answered him with clouds of smoke. The upshot was a row ; and the master, over-mastered, was glad to escape with life and limb. Such an issue here was not to 19* 222 PLEAS FOR KAGGEU SCHOOLS. be risked. We began with a small number ; and were gradually filling up, when symptoms of that controversy began to appear which has now ended in an open rupture. In a newspaper of this city, it was asserted by an anonymous writer, that Roman Catholics were excluded from our School. Our Com- mittee was most unwilling to waste on con- troversy tlie time and attention which might be better employed ; so we neither took in sail, nor shifted our course, nor stayed one moment, to answer these random shots. Peo- ple, however, being ready to suppose that what is not answered is unanswerable, the Commit- tee at length found it necessary to give this reckless assertion the answer which it admitted and deserved — a distinct denial. At the very time that charge was made, one half of the chil- dren were the children of nominally Roman Catholic parents. Obliged to abandon this position, the ground of attack was shifted ; and now it was asserted that we were violating the Constitution of the Society, and conducting the Schools so as virtually to exclude Romao APPENDIX. 223 Oatliolk cWVLen. In their own defence, and in answer to xh i charge of introducing " a sys- tem of re]ig\"»u3 tests into the Schools, and of excluding, in Roman Catholic children, the largest portion of those children for whom the Schools were designed," the Acting Committee publislied a " Statement," which, along with a " Minute of the General Committee," approving of that Statement, will be found in the Appen- dix to this " Supplement." Though the efforts of the Committee were successful in satisfying a large portion of the public, there still re- mained some of our original subscribers, be- tween whom and the Committee there was an important, and, as it proved to be, an irrecon- cilable difference. Tluese gentlemen requested the Lord Provost to call a meeting, for the purpose of having " it clearly ascertained whether the Schools will be conducted on a system which must necessarily exclude children of the Roman Catholic, or any faith which dif fers from that of Protestant teachers." It was now feared, though not openly proclaimed, that an attempt would be made to exclude the 224 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. word of God from the Ragged School, and limit the education to secuUir instruction, leav- ing the Protestant and Roman Catholic parties to manage the religious interests of tlie chil- dren as they best miglit. The question whether the Committee had acted honestly and fairly on the regulations approved of at the first pub- lic meeting, now sunk into comparative insig- nificance. It was swallowed up in the larger and far more important question, Shall the candle of Divine truth shine in these Schools, or not ? Shall God's saving Word be taught to these unhappy outcasts, or not ? The bat- tle which had begun in Aberdeen and Dun- dee had now extended to the capital ; and the jmblic meeting which had been called by the Lord Provost was, more than any meeting which had been for a long time held in Edin- burgh, looked forward to with the liveliest interest by the warmest friends of Bible truth, and the wisest friends of these unhappy chil- dren. An attempt was made by some parties to represent the Committee as the enemies of religious toleration. Large bills covered the APPENDIX. 225 walls of our city, summoning the friends of toleration to rally in the Music Hall, to coun- teract our sectarian proceedings. This attempt to pack the meeting met with a signal failure. The Music Hall was crowded, but not with the parties whom this bill was meant to call out. Whether they were ashamed of it or not, we do not know — but, with the exception of a very small portion of the audience, that im- mense and influential assembly, embracing Epis- copalians, Presbyterians and Independents, ex- pressed its entire and hearty approval of the step which the Committee had taken, in re- solving that the Word of God should be taught during the ordinary school hours, and that true religion should form an essential part of edu- cation. Edinburgh never uttered its voice more distinctly or more decidedly on any ques- tion, or on any occasion. We never went to a meeting with so much anxiety, nor left one with so much thankfulness. It was a blessed sight to see Protestants of all Evangelical do- nominations, and those of them who but a few years before had been arrayed against each 226 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. other in the Yoluntar j and Non-Intrusion con- troversies, now fighting, side by side ; rallying around the Bible with the kindness of bretliren, and the keenness of men in earnest. Holding it to be the very principle of Prot estantism that every man should be free to judge in matters of religion, uninfluenced either by fear or favor, we would tamper with no man's conscience. By the bread of a Ragged School, to bribe a person to abandon his faith, is in principle as bad as it would be to revive the fires and tortures of the Inquisition. We abhor the use of all such means ; but we as much abhor the claim which Romish priests or their tools make to limit the free, full, and un- restricted use of God's revealed Word. Im- aged by the sun of heaven, the Bible is com- mon to all, needed by all, and the right of all. He violates as much my spiritual rights, who stands between me and the Word of God, as he does my natural, who stands between me and the light of day : and certainly the greatest favor which the Roman Catholic priests could confer on those to whom they offer their ser APPENDIX. 227 vi?es, would be to do for them what the philos- opher in his tub requested might be done for him by Alexander the Great — " Stand out," said Diogenes, "between me and the sun." The ground we took up may be stated in a single sentence. Considering the condition of the children, and the cliaracter of the parents, who are living without the fear either of God or man, and do not even make a profession of religion, the principles which might rule a na- tional system of education do not apply here. Here the question cannot even be entertained, whether the religious instruction might not be safely left to the parents. Those for whom these schools are established are untaught, un- cared-for, helpless outcasts. As to the state of their parents, that may be well illustrated by this fact. In a mixed population of nominal Roman Catholics and Protestants, out of tlie first two hundred and fifty individuals in the Old Greyfriars' parish whom we visited on first coming to Edinburg)i, there were not more than five who ever darkened the door of church or chapel. To the children of families, there- 228 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. fore, which are to all intents and purposes heathen, we are bound to act as if they were heathen children. One of the first things we have to do, as the best for their well-being both in this life and in the life to come, is to teach them the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. Their souls, not less than their bodies, are cast upon our care ; and in such a case we dare not and cannot plead the excuse of Cain, — " Am I my brother's keeper ?" If, however, it should liappen that some decent Roman Catholic par- ents found it necessary to send their children to our Ragged School, the Committee, as will be seen from one of their regulations, were willing to commit them to their parents' charge upon the Sabbath day. Beyond this they could not go. They could not yield to a Roman Catholic priest the right of withholding from any child of Adam the Word of God. It is a matter of thankfulness to find, that in the reso- lution which we have adopted, and the position which we have taken up, -we have met with so much Christian sympathy ; and I cannot afi*ord a bettor example of this, nor, perliaps, more APPENDIX. 229 effectively close this Supplement, than by sub- mitting to the public the following letter, which I had the honor to receive from the Duke of Argyll :— "RosENEATH, July 8th. " Rev. Sir, — I beg to be allowed to have my name placed on the list of Subscribers to the Ragged School which you have had such a principal share in founding, and the manage- ment of which, as regards the subject of relig- ious instruction, you have so ably, and, I think, so triumphantly defended. " I must apologize for the smallness of a con- tribution which, but for the urgent claims of a large and necessitous population, would have been somewhat more commensurate with my sense of the value and importance of the object. " I cannot allow this opportunity to pass without expressing my humble but entire ap- proval of the course which the Committee lias pursued on the point above referred to. Be- tween all those bodies which are commonly included under the term Protestant commun- ions, there is so largo a common ground, thai 20 230 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. there ought to be no difficulty whatever in teaching effectively, and with purpose, yet without sectarian bias, the doctrines and pre- cepts of ChristiaD truth. But the differences between them and the Roman Church are so numerous, pervading, and important, that tlie teaching which avoids them all must, I think, be formal, vague, and pointless. The nearest approach to anything which can be called re- ligious teaching, compatible with such a sys- tem, is probably that contemplated by the Irish national scheme, in which readings are selected from the Bible. This has been supported by many excellent and able men. Not having any abstract objection, as some' have, to the princi- ple of selections, but thinking that everything depends on how large and ample such selec- tions are, I should be sorry to say a word against a scheme which may be the best or the only one possible in the peculiar circumstances of that country. But certainly I hold that such a scheme, as applied to the ' ragged ' chil- dren of our great towns, would sacrifice a very large amount of positive and practical good APPENDIX. 231 for the attainment of very small and very doubtful benefits. Where it can be reasonably expected that children, in addition to such (comparatively meagre) readings, will receive more positive instruction from parents, or guardians, or others interested in their welfare, the plan may not in itself be objectionable : Protestants will then not lose by the omissions —Romanists may l)e allowed their benefit. But where no such expectation can reasonably be formed, the Protestants mnst lose much, and may lose all that is positive in religion ; whilst the Romanists will be in danger of being bound to their own communion only by its grosser ties— by its observances, its priesthood, or its absolutions— and lose all those deeper influ- ences which have raised, and doubtless are rais- ing, in the Roman church, as earnest, as de- voted, and as spiritually-minded Christians as the best who have believed in purer creeds. "On these grounds, as well as on others which I cannot now refer to, I conceive such a plan to be essentially bad as applied to Ragged Schools : and as the Committee seems to me to 232 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. have been unjustly assailed, I think it the duty of those who approve of your course in thia respect to come forward now in its support. "I am, Rev. Sir, yours faithfully, Argyll." "The Rev. Thomas Guthrie." No. n. CONSTITUTION AND RULES of the Asso- CIATION FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RaGGED Industrial Schools for Destitute Chil- dren IN Edinburgh. 1. It is the object of this Association to re- claim the neglected and destitute children of Edinburgh, by affording them the benefits of a good common and Christian Education, and by training them to habits of regular industry, so as to enable them to earn an honest liveli- hood, and fit them for the duties of life. 2. With this view the Association shall es- tablish and maintain one or more schools for such children, in such parts of the city or sub- urbs as may be found most advisable. APPENDIX. 2'5'i 3. The following classes of cliildren shall ])e excluded : — 1st, Those who are already r(\irn- larly attending Day-Schools ; — 2d, Those wliosc parents are earning a regular income, and ahle to procure education for their children ; — lid, Those who are receiving, or entitled to receive, support and education from the Parochial Boards ;-^with this declaration, that it shall be in the power of the Acting Committee to deal with special cases, although falling under any of these classes, having regard always to the special objects of the Association. 4. The Association shall consist of all Sub- scribers of Ten. Shillings per annum and up- wards, and of all Donors of Five Pounds and upwards. 5. It shall be governed by a General Com- mittee, consisting of fifty Members (fifteen being a quorum), and an Acting Committee, consist- ing of twenty-five Members (five being a quo- rum), with a Secretary and Treasurer. The Acting Committee shall be entitled to be pres- ent and vote at all Meetings of the General Committee. 20* 234 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. 6. A Meeting of the Association shall be held annually, in April, when a Report of the proceedings shall be read, and the Committees and Office-Bearers elected for the ensuing year. The Acting Committee shall meet at least once every month. 7. The Acting Committee shall have power to elect the Office-Bearers, to appoint Local Committees, and to make laws and regulations to be observed in conducting the business of the Association ; and all Schools to be estab- lished by the Association shall be subject to such laws and regulations ; but no school shall be established without the consent of the Gen- eral Committee. 8. The appointment of Teachers, and other officers, shall be made by the Acting Com- mittee. 9. The general plan upon which the Schools Bhall be conducted shall be as follows, viz. — To give the children an allowance of food for their daily support. To instruct them in reading, writing, and arithmetic. APPENDIX. 23r) To train them in liabits of industry, h\ instructing and employing them daily in such sorts of work as are suited to their years. To teach them the truths of the gospel, making the Holy Scriptures the groundwork of instruction. On Sabbath the children shall receive food as on other days, and such relig- ious instruction as shall be arranged by the Acting Committee. No. m. STATEMENT .^y the Acting Committee of the Association for Establishing Ragged or Industrial Schools. The Committee liaving tlieir attention called to certain articles and letters in a re- spectable newspaper in this city, of a nature fit- ted to cause misconception and distrust in the mind of the public on the suiiject of religious teaching in their schools, tliink it necessary tc publish tlie folic wing statement : — 236 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. By the Constitution and Rules of the Associ- ation it is declared, that " It is the object of this Association to reclaim the neglected or profligate children of Edinburgh, by affording them the benefits of a good common and Chris- tian education, and by training them to habits of regular industry, so as to enable them to earn an honest livelihood, and fit them for tlie duties of life ;" and, in regard to the general plan upon which the schools are to be con- ducted, it is declared tliat the children shall be taught " the truths of the gospel, making the Holy Scriptures the groundwork of instruc- tion ; " and that " on Sabbath the children shall receive food as on other days, and such religious instruction as shall be arranged by the Acting Committee." The Constitution and Rules, from which these quotations are taken, were fully discussed at a large meeting, in the Council Chambers, of the Preliminary Committee appointed by the Lord Provost, and approved (?f by them. They were thereafter submitted to the public meeting in the Music Hall, and received the APPENDIX. 237 unanimous approval of tliat meeting ; ami the general plan of the schools has been kept prom- inently in the view (if tlie public in all the statements and appeals issued bj the Commit- tee with a view to obtaining contributions for the schools. From the large amount of sub- scriptions that have already been received, the Committee are happy to think that the princi- ples of the Association have met with the gen- eral confidence of the public. These principles have been, and will continue to be, faithfully adhered to in the management of the schools. The religious instruction con- veyed at these schools must necessarily be of the most simple and elementary kind, so as to be adai)ted to tlie tender years and gross igno- rance of the children. Its entire freedom from all sectarian bias is effectually secured by the superintendence of a Committee impartially selected from the various religious bodies com- posing the great bulk of tlie coinmunity. The only books hitherto used in the school iiave been the Bible and the First and Second Books of Education, published under the superintend 238 PLEAS FOIJ RAGGED SCHOOLS. ence of the Commissioners of National Edu- cation in Ireland. The Committee feel that tliey cannot hope for a blessing on their schools if religion is not the pervading principle of the instruction given to the children. The instruction on the Lord^s day is con- ducted on like principles as on week-days, though, of course, it bears a more purely relig- ious character. In order to meet the case of those parents who may have conscientious ob- jections to their children receiving the more special religious instruction communicated on Sabbath, or attending public worship with the teacher, provision is made that such parents, provided they ai*e in a condition to be entrusted with the care of their children, shall be allowed to withdraw them for the purpose of attending their own place of worship, of whatever de- nomination. The Committee feel assured that this explan- atory statement will be sufficie:^ to satisfy the public that the accusations brought against them, of introducing a " system of religious tests" into the schools, and of *' excluding the APPENDIX. 2:V.« largest portion of those children for whom the schools were designed," are entirely without foundation. It must be obvious that an institution of this kind, intended to provide a home, food, moral and industrial training, as well as the ordinary branches of scholarship, for children other- wise utterly destitute of all these, is l)y no means on the same footing with ordinary day schools, in which applicants may select the branches they may wish to attend; and can- not, therefore, be judged of on the same i)i'in- ciples. The Committee view themselves as not in the position of mere ordinary instructors, but as coming, in the great majority of cases, in the place of parents, with regard to the temporal as well as spiritual interests of the children. As parents, they cannot throw off the responsibility attaching to them of enlight- ening the minds of the children ; and, in so doing, they cannot but give them that instruc- tion which is best calculated to reclaim lli'" children from the miserable condition in which thev are found. It would be utterly ruinous 240 PLEAS POTl RAOrrED SCHOOLS. to the plan, and defeat all its benevolent pur- poses, especially considering the criminal and vagrant habits of the children who are to be benefited by it, if any other system were adopt- ed than that of subjecting them all to the en- tire moral and religious discipline — simply based upon the Word of God — which it pur- poses to bring to bear upon them. It may be added, that although it has been alleged that those principles of this Association which are now attacked are peculiar to it, the Committee do not know of any institution of the kind now in existence in Scotland which is not founded on the very same principles. The Committee conclude with expressing their unanimous and earnest desire to follow out thoroughly the sound principles on which the Association is founded. They ask to be nidged by what they are now doing ; and to be believed when they state, in the strongest manner, their anxious wish to avoid sectarian- ism, and to pursue their work earnestly and cheei-fully in the spirit of their Divine Master, who went about doing good. They request APPENDIX. 241 the public to visit the soliools, and to judge for themselves whether they are efficiently and properly conducted. By appointment of the Acting Committee, And. Jameson, Convener, Edinburgh, 14th June, 1847. At a meeting of the General Committee of the Association for Establishing Ragged or In- dustrial Schools in Edinburgh, held in No. 6 York Place, on 18th June, 1847, The Lord Provost in the Chair, The following resolutions were moved by James Craufurd, Esq., Advocate, seconded by Dr. W. P. Alison, and agreed to : — That this meeting approve of the " State- ment of the Acting Committee ; " but since it appears that some misapprehension prevails in regard to the principles on which the schools are conducted, Be-fiolved, 1st, That the General Committee emphatically disclaim all intention of using 242 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. the advantages held out bj these schools as a means of tempting Roman Catholics to the abandonment or compromise of opinions which they conscientiously entertain. The reclaiming of children from ignorance and crime, not their conversion from Romanism, is the aim of the Committee and the object of the schools ; and the Committee rejoice to know that, both m Aberdeen, and hitherto in Edinburgh, the chil- dren of Roman Catholic parents have attended the schools without any objection being made. 2d, That no catechism, or other formula of doctrine, is or shall be taught to any child whose parents object to it. 3d, That children are and shall be excused from attendance at school, or at worship, on the Sabbath day, whose parents object to their attendance, and undertake that the children are otherwise religiously instructed, according to the tenets of the communion to which they be- long, provided they are in a condition to be entrusted with the care of their children. APPENDIX. 243 No. IV. The childrci are at school twelve hours each day in summer, and eleven in winter. At pres- ent they meet in tlie morning at eight, and p:o away in the evening shortly after seven o'clock. The eleven hours are disposed of as follows : — Meals and I'lay. Lt'ssous. Work From 8 to 8^, Ablutions - h u " 8|to 9i, All Working 11 ii " 9^0 lOj, Breakfast and Play f li " lOi to 11, Calling RoU and Bible [ a f Lesson - - J « 11 to 1, One-half in school- ) room, and other " a 1 half in work-room -' " 1 to 2, All walking - i li « 2 to 2.\, Dinner - - - h ti " 2Ho 3, All in school-room u h « 3 to 5, One-half in school- ) room, other half in r u 1 work-room ' " 5 to 6J, All working - u u " 6i to 7i, Supper and closing 1 (( 3J 34 4J 244 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. Only one hour is counted from eleven to one, and from three to five, as then only half of the boys are in school-room and work-room. No. Y. 27 York Place, December 25th, 1848. My dear Mr. Guthrie, — The table showing the composition of the Original Ragged Schools is made up of terrible details. It affords sub- ject-matter for the wisest men to ponder, con- stituting, as it does, an analysis of a sample only of the largest and sorest evil which afflicts the body social of this country. One item, not included in the table, might appear to many to be a strange one. Thirty per cent, of the children ran away from the Ragged Schools, " and came back, or were brought back, and then attended." It may seem strange that they ran away, and this af- ter food had been given to them, clothing had been put upon them, and kind treatment had been exercised towards them. The key to the explanation o: the phenomenon is to be found APPENDIX. 245 in this : tliey arc callous to what wc understand by hardship. Tlicy don't know lionio, noitlicr do they know aught about friendsliip. From infancy they have catered for themselves ; they are ignorant of what is expressed by the word risk; they are independent; they resist the very gentlest restraint, and tlieir first impulse is to escape from it ; they liave no love for what they never experienced ; and they don't fear tliat with which they are familiar. Hence the smallest offence to their freer than Arab feelings is cause enough for them to endeavor to escape from school, and resume the more than savage life to wdiich they have been habit- uated from their earliest infancy. It is very encouraging to know that " running away from school" is daily becoming less frequent; and that of those who run away, the number of instan- ces in w^hich the parents bring them back is on the increase. Tliis, I think, affords evidence of two things ;— first, that the schools are gain- ing character in the estimation of the children; and, secondly, that they are acting reflexly ou the class to which the children belong. 21* 246 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. The title of the famous " Plea," by which vod stirred the towns of Scotland, and of England likewise, not excepting the metropolis, has been proven to embody a truth, wherever it has been tested by the establishment of Ragged Schools on the principles so clearly propounded in the " Plea," and so manfully vindicated when they were impugned. " Prevention is better than cure ;" and it is likewise cheaper than cure. In contrasting the cost of cure with the cost of prevention, let it be borne -in mind that it is the " ragged " children who either are or be- come the thieves and vagabonds for whose de- tection such an immense police is maintained in thiS country, and for whose safe custody such giga vtic prison establishments are necessary. The. ^ children by degrees acquire a title to be transported ; and, ere they grow to be men and women, very many of them are sent to join their parents and acquaintances, who constitute the almost devil population of Norfolk Island. The supply of these " ragged " children is very great ; the cost of their maintenance (they live by plunder) is enormous ; and the price of them APPENDIX. 247 to the country, when they arc recognized by the law, is prodigious. Mr. Smith, the admirable Governor of the Edinburgh Prison, permitted me some time since to study a set of tables of jail statistics, which he made two years ago, and which are perhaps the best, as well as the most extensive, that were ever constructed. Among other memoranda, I extracted this one : — In the years 1841-42-43, the cost of prisoners committed to the Edinburgh Jail for " theft and reset" was £11,632 6s. The numbers committed for this crime during these years respectively, were^ 1963, 1811, 1932— in all, 5706 ; and the yearly average therefore was 1902. Tlie total aver- age number of commitments for all offences during these three years was 16,653. Thus the commitments for theft amounted to no less than 34 per cent, of the whole. These prisoners were maintained in prison at the rate of £12 per annum. Now I am quite safe in saying, that nearly all these prisoners belonged to the class to which the " ragged " boy belongs. Is the questif>A one of finance? Then look, dear 248 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. sir, at the other side of the account. Here I laust quote from the Original Ragged School Report of last year. It is dated March 31, 1848 :— Boys. Girls. Total. Total number of children admitted since e opening of the Schools, . . 310 199 509 Of whom, born in Scotland, . 186 82 268 " in England, . 11 2 13 " in Ireland, . . 113 115 228 Total as above, . 310 199 50 Number above ten years of age, . 161 118 279 Number under ten years of age, . 149 81 230 Total as above, . 310 199 509 Number that have died, . . 9 7 16 Number that have gone home to Ireland, 3 4 7 Number that have left, or been dis- charged as not fit objects, .119 54 173 Number that have found employ- ment, . . . . . 21 14 35 Number that have removed to a higher class of Schools, . . 5 8 13 Number on the Roll at 31st March, 1848, 153 112 205 Total as above, . 310 199 509 • APPENDIX. 249 The number on the roll at this date are distributed as follows : — In the Boys' School, .... 105 In the Girls' School, .... 90 In the Juvenile School (under ten years of age), 70 2G5 Of those on the roll at this date there are, — Pohce cases, i. e., children ascertained to have once or oftener passed through tlie Police Courts, 78 Note. — Of these, 18 are under 10 y'rs of age. Children with both parents dead, . . 20 Children with one parent dead, . . .118 Children deserted by parents, ... 24 Cliildren that could not read the alphabet on enter- ing the School : — In the Boys' School, 40 In the Girls' School, 29 And nearly all in the Juvenile School The Report says that the current expenses of ihe schools amounted to £820 105. ^d. Tak- ing the number on the roll (265) at tlie date of tlie Report as a daily average, and deduct- ing from it, say 50, as the daily number of absentees from sickness and other causes, we find that the children are fed and educated at 1250 PLEAS FOR RAGGED 'sCHOOLS. the rate of about £4 per annum. The financial view of the question, therefore, involves con- trast, and not comparison. £4 are paid for the ragged boy ; £12 are paid for the incar- cerated thief ;* and the question is, which sum does the public prefer to pay ? But I am much below the mark when I say that £12 is the sum paid for the incarcerated thief; for the law expenditure, a large per centage of jail expense, and the value of the property stolen by the thief, are not included in the account. What these amount to I do not know ; but this I am aware of, — they are enormous, and the public pay for them. I have said that nearly all the prisoners re- ferred to belong to the class whose cause you have adopted, and advocate with such power. This cla?s is hcloio the pauper ; it is not pro- tected by the law. It is never noticed by the law until one of those belonging to it has been murdered, or one almost equally unfortunate * The average cost per head of prisoners in all the prisons in Scotland is £16 7*. 4rf. per annum. — Ninth Report of Gtn^ irol Board of Directors of Prisons for Scotland, p. 121. APPENDIX. 251 has stolen a loaf, impelled by hunger, and un- deterred by any moral sense. This class is entitled to be cared for before the members of it become criminals. It is just, it is politic, and it is economic. I am unwilling to extend this letter ; but the opportunity, is a good one for placing a few criminal statistics before the public, that bear upon the cause which you advocate. In the year 1841, at least 240 children, four- teen years old and under, were committed to prison. These cost at the rate of £10 each, which is equal to £2400 per annum. Is it not better to endeavor to save a boy at the rate of £4, than to harden him in sin and crime at tlie rate of £10, per annum ? Perhaps many of the readers of your appeal may perceive that the following memoranda, extracted from Mr. Smith's tables, contain an argument in favor of the extension of the Rag- ged School system. During the years 1842-43-44 the number of children under ten years of age who were committed to prison amounted to 243. 252 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. During these three years, 232 individuals were transported ; 64 of these committed their first offence when sixteen years of age and under ; and it is remarked of many of them, that their nearest relatives were often in prison, and that not a few of them were transported. Up to the year 1846, 3152 families, consisting of 3509 individuals, had furnished 10,706 com- mitments, being on an average three commit- ments to each person. Of these families — 193 had sent 2 individuals to prison. 28 " 3 " 20 " 4 " 8 " 6 4 " 6 " 1 " 7 " I must reiterate the observation, that the mass of the individuals to whom these memo- randa refer belonged to the class which sup- plies the Ragged School with pupils. You, in common with other accurate ob- servers and just thinkers, trace famine, misery, and crime to the dram-shops, which are planted APPENDIX. 253 thickly in all the populous parts of our cities, as if with the design to i-uin men, body and soul. With whom the res})oi!sibility of tliis ruination rests it is not for me to say, although I have an opinion on the subject. Tlie statistics of the Edinburgh Jail show that fifty-four per cent, of the offences for wliicli individuals are committed to prison are the direct effects of drunkenness. Seventy-three per cent, of the crimes are committed in tlie localities where sixty per cent, of the drinking-houses, properly so called, are situated, and fifty per cent, of the spirit- licenses are held. Further, seventy-three per cent, of the crimes committed in Edinburgh and the suburbs are committed by persons re- siding in the localities where the crimes are perpetrated. These are memoranda from prison statistics, and they suggest very gloomy thoughts to tlic reflecting ; but they don't tell half of the truth. In a note by Mr. Smith it is observed, — " The number taken to the Police Office in the tin ee years ending December, 184-3, for druJikenucss 254 PLEAS FOE RAUGED SCHOOLS. was 13,858, — a number equal to about one-six teentli of the population. Probably at least two-thirds of all other cases are caused indi- rectly by drunkenness. This will be more ap- parent when it is considered how many lose their character and employment from drunken- ness, and are thus turned idle upon the public, with no other alternative than to beg or steal, for either of which offences they are sent to prison. Many of those who are too young to have become addicted to the vice, are the off- spring of dissipated parents, and are very often left destitute, either by the desertion and neg- lect, or death, of those whose duty it was to provide for them. Again, some are compelled by dissipated parents to beg or steal, and thd proceeds are expended in liquor." This note when we consider who wrote it, and upon what an amount of experience it is based, is invalu- able. The children alluded to by Mr. Smith are " ragged boys and girls." The ragged .boy has been kept prominently before the reader's eye, and the ragged girl has been in a measure concealed. Is there no APPENDIX. 255 pity for her ? Her history is as dismal as that of her brother. I dare not trace it. Tlie whole of it can be seen any day in two hours' time, by walking through the Grassmarket, — looking into any of the little offices of hell which are rife in that locality, and each one of which is always thronged, — passing up any of the foul closes which open into the market, — entering a house there, and glancing over it (a glance is all that those whose duty has not forced them to tarry often in these dens of in- famy can give), — visiting the Police Office and then the Calton Jail. In two hours tlieir whole history can be seen, and much of it heard Contrast the power of a pimpled spirit-dealei with that of a missionary, to influence such a terrible population as that to which I now refer. Why, sir, tlie spirit-shops are epidemic, and more deadly than the cholera. Eacli one of them is a centre of contagion, ever in ac- tivity,— of a contagion which slays with cer- tainty, recovery from it, when caught, being hopeless. Much has been said against tlie " wee pawns." They are dependont things and not worth speaking against or about, so 256 PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. long as that on whicli their existence depends is not only tolerated, but fostered. I must now conclude this fragmentary letter ; but before doing so, I may allude to the effect which the Ragged Schools have had upon tlie health of the children. They have had a marked good effect ; and it is my belief that the rate of mortality is much reduced among them. Precise observations, however, on this subject are very difficult to make. Imperfect or false mortality statistics are worse than uselass, — they are mischievous ; and therefore I refrain from doing more than stating what my belief is regarding the effect which the Ragged Schools have had on the mortality of the children. Believe me to be, my dear Sir, yours most sincerely, G. Bell. No. YI. Rothesay, 20th December, 1848. My dear Sir, — I have great pleasure in giving my testimony regarding the operation of the Industrial Schools in Edinburgh. For upwards of five years it has been my duty, as Sheriff Substitute, first of Ayrshire APPENDIX 257 and then of Edinburgh, to try a great nunilior of yoiuig offenders in the Sheriff and Police Courts. The great majority of tliese, at least in Edinburgh, belonged to the unhappy class for whose benefit the schools have been insti- tuted. It was my practice to examine into their liistory and lial)its ; and I do not remem- ber of one wlio, according to his own account, attended any church. A few had at one time or other been at a Sabbath-school, and received there the little useful knowledge they possessed. The mass were the children of destitute and profligate parents, or friendless outcasts, witli- out any home. Although living beyond the reach of the ministrations of the pulpit, or the instruction of ordinary schools, the class were well known to the police of the large towns, where increasing numbers and depravity have become one of our most formidable social evils. They frequently appeared at the bar of the Police Courts, charged with petty thefts, and were sentenced repeatedly to short imprison- ments, until the num])er of their convictions entitled them to appear before a jury in tlio Sheriff or Justiciary Court. As far as niv l!5^ PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. experience goes, this system of awarding short imprisonments in the case of these young of- fenders produces none of the eifects for which punishment is intended. It neither deters nor reforms. On the contrary, it seems only to harden the heart and destroy the character. By the time the case permits the Judge to award an imprisonment of sufficient duration to give any rational prospect of benefit to the individual in the way of moral and religious instruction, the character is generally lost ir- retrievably. The evil is increased by the faulty constitution of the Police Courts, in which a number of unprofessional magistrates sit, who change every month, and who, differ- ing in opinion in regard to the objects of penal discipline, pronounce every variety of sentence. The consequence is, that the punishment being imcertain and variable, as well as inadequate, the evils of short imprisonments are increased : they l)ecome a subject of mockery among the criminals themselves ; and these convictions become a sort of training school for crime. Between the three years from 1843 to 1846, as appears from a published Report of the Gov- APPENDIX. 259 eriior of the Ediuburgli Prison, 740 children under fourteen years of age had been commit- ted to that prison. It is painful to think, that in the case of tlie mass of tliese unhappy heino;?, their sentence liad no other effect tlian to ex- tinguish any fear they previously entertained of the prison, and destroy any prospect of ob- taining honest employment. You may con- ceive the distressing situation of the Magistrate who is bound to sentence children from nine to fourteen years of age to repeated short im- prisonments, with the moral certainty that each sentence is rendering them more hardened in crime, and diminishing the prospect of any im- provement in their cluxracter or liabits. To Mr. Watson, Slieriff-Substitute of Aber- deenshire, belongs the merit of first organizing an institution for arresting this great evil. Ho has conclusively shown the practical)ility of placing almost tlic whole destitute and neglect- ed children of a lari>-