science and free inquiry, to excite among the most numerous 

 class of our community, a general contempt of all religion, 

 and especially of that in which they have been bred. Yet if 

 there be any class of society, more indebted than all others, to 

 Christianity, it is the laboring and poorer class. Teaching 

 that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed with 

 the same unalienable capacities of virtue, improvement and 

 immortality ; Christianity comes with special blessings to the 

 poor. It was a distinctive character of her doctrines, that 

 they communicated " glad tidings to the poor" — a principle 

 unknown to the ancient philosophy, and a fact before unheard 

 of in the history of mankind. In accordance with this prin- 

 ciple, she opens to the most humble, the field of competition ; 

 stimulates him to exertion ; and sustains him with the assur- 

 ance that he i^ equally with others, the object of divine re- 

 gard. If, after all, he fail, as he often will, of obtaining the 

 good things of this life, she indemnifies him for the want of 

 worldly possessions and enjoyments, by inviting him to plea- 

 sures, intellectual and sublime, and by setting before him 

 rewards, glorious and enduring. Christianity has not only 

 enabled the poor to claim, with a divine warrant, their equal 

 rights among men ; but she has taught the rich that the best 

 return they can make to Providence for its bounty, is to imi- 

 tate Him who " went about doing good." Hence the numer- 

 ous institutions for the relief and instruction of the poor, the 

 asylums, and almshouses, and hospitals, the infant, Sunday, 

 and free schools, which belong to Christian nations, and 

 which more than any thing else, distinguish them from the 

 rest of mankind. The same spirit of equality and benevolence 

 pervades the jurisprudence of Christian nations. Wealth is 

 not exempted from the restraints of law, nor can the poor be 

 trampled upon with impunity. In a word, the protection of 

 private rights, the enjoyment of civil liberty, and the even 

 handed distribution of justice, if they do not necessarily de- 

 pend on the possession of Christian knowledge, are yet to be 

 found in perfection and extent, in precise proportion to the 

 diffusion of such knowledge. 



If the truth of any system of religious faith, is to be tested 

 by its effects on the happinpss of society and of individuals, 



