Page:The Female Advocate.djvu/114

 shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea." A sentence one cannot think upon without horror, seeing so many little one offended daily and hourly, and left helpless and forlorn in all the storms and trials of the world, to work their passage through mortality, still floating about, like a bubble upon the surface, in all the delicacy and softness of their sex, without money, friend, or prospect of any human comfort, or even relief, to enable them to drag on a miserable existence the ensuing day; surely, there is not any thing can equal the horrors of a state like this: yet what numbers experience it all, before they will condescend so low as to shrink from the paths of virtue. Surely this does not merit censure: yet, astonishing it is, the smallest feature of poverty is almost sure to be branded with the names of infamy and vice. What a trying situation after a life of affluence! yet, where is the mind of sensibility, under such circumstances as these, who would not feel it almost as great an affliction to discover their