No. 216.] 435 



are ordinarily, peculiarly unwelcome, especially to the poor, who are 

 usually jealous over what they conceive to be their now too circum- 

 scribed rights. And yet so little of the responsibility of the accu- 

 mulated impurities of their crowded habitations rests on a single 

 family, that I think I may say in answer to your sixth inquiry, that 

 the majority of them would be glad to receive official aid and in- 

 struction. There are, probably, but very few who do not think they 

 would be glad to live more cleanly, if their neighbors would render 

 it possible by doing so too. Any improvement, although constrained, 

 would undoubtedly increase their self-respect, and, of course, their 

 happiness, and facilitate the efforts of those who are endeavoring to 

 advance their spiritual interests. 



r 



Most of the cases of which I have kept any record, would rathe 



illustrate the influence of improved morals on physicial condition' 

 And yet there is no doubt of their reciprocal influence. Not unfre" 

 quently, the commencement of the elevating process is the relief o^ 

 some physical distress, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, 

 or healing the sick, by the use of such means as the benevolent 

 supply; always endeavoring to keep before the mind those great 

 truths on which we rely, through the efficient agency of the Spirit, 

 for moral renovation. 



As an illustration of the depreciating process alluded to in your first 

 inquiry, I recollect a case in point, although not recorded. An in- 

 timate friend of mine was acquainted with a young lady, about thirty 

 years ago, then moving in good society, with moral susceptibilities, 

 and a refined, discriminating sense of propriety, somewhat above 

 mediocrity. At about the age of twenty-two, she married, as w^as 

 thought, respectably. A few years proved that the husband's morals 

 and habits were not such as to secure respect or independence; and 

 they gradually sunk, and my friend lost sight of them. 



About six years since, a child was brought by a Tract visitor, 

 from a filthy cellar, and put into the Sabbath school class of my 

 friend, who, upon learning the name of the child, visited the mother, 

 and found her to be the same person known years ago as a lady of 

 refinement. She had now lost all ambition; her husband was a 

 worthless inebriate; her children, with countenances of promise, were, 

 like their mother, completely at home in their most miserable apart- 

 ment, rendered exceedingly so by neglect. Her moral susceptibilities 

 were as entirely changed as her physical condition. Religious truths 

 •seemed to make no impression upon her mind — her heart seemed 



