Page:The religious instruction of the colored population.djvu/13

 (says Dr. Chalmers,) I want to go to the very bottom of the pool and fish up the very lowest. Go (he says) to the very humblest in society, and let me see the Christian church performing its functions and letting down its services to the very meanest and poorest."

Again, he says: "I am sure that the ruder and the rawer the material out of which the finished goods are worked, the greater is the triumph of the manufacturing art." Oh, my Christian brethren, would not the salvation of our poor be a glorious trophy of our gospel? As ransomed souls—as justified and perfected spirits in Heaven—would they not be bright stars in our crown of rejoicing, and also in our blessed Saviour's diadem of glory—stars all the brighter for the thick gloom of that night in which they were wandering before?

Is it not a most attractive and inviting circumstance that these poor are, in themselves, of such inestimable value as immortal beings? To preach the gospel successfully to our poor, is to save so many souls from death. "Honor all men," says the Apostle. Why honor all? Because God made all—because all have one common origin, nature and destiny—because all have capabilities for endless and immeasurable improvement—because for the redemption of all God made His Son a sacrifice—and because the common nature of all God's Son united with His own, and now every one of them even the poorest, has an Elder Brother seated on Heaven's throne. For these reasons we must nut neglect to have the gospel preached to our poor. , The faithful preaching of the gospel to these poor will be followed by great advantages to our own children. These people are in our very families, ind their ignorance and their irreligion must inevitably affect the morals of our own offspring. Great advantages will also follow to ourselves. This, my brethren, is no new experiment which we propose to try. It has already been fairly tried, in various parts of this and our neighboring States; and the conviction has been forced, more and more, upon all observing minds, that the more thoroughly these prople are imbued with the principles of divine truth the better they become, in every respect. These rough diamonds, worn, as they must necessarily be, on the bosom of our domestic life, the more perfectly they are freed from their natural incrustations of ignorance and corruption,