LETTER XXVII.
DEAR S.: -
The next day we went to hear a sermon in behalf of the ragged schools,
by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The children who attended the ragged
schools of that particular district were seated in the gallery, each
side of the organ. As this was the Sunday appropriated to the
exercise, all three of the creeds were read - the Apostles',
Athanasian, and Nicene; all which the little things repeated after the
archbishop, with great decorum, and probably with the same amount of
understanding that we, when children, had of the Assembly's Catechism.
The venerable archbishop was ushered into the pulpit by beadles, with
gold lace cocked hats, striking the ground majestically with their
long staves of office. His sermon, however, was as simple, clear, and
beautiful an exposition of the duty of practical Christianity towards
the outcast and erring as I ever heard. He said that, should we find a
young child wandering away from its home and friends, we should
instinctively feel it our duty to restore the little wanderer; and
such, he said, is the duty we owe to all these young outcasts, who had
strayed from the home of their heavenly Father.
After the sermon they took up a collection; and when we went into the
vestry to speak to the archbishop, we saw him surrounded by the church
wardens, counting over the money.
I noticed in the back part of the church a number of children in
tattered garments, with rather a forlorn and wild appearance, and was
told that these were those who had just been introduced into the
school, and had not been there long enough to come under its modifying
influences. We were told that they were always thus torn and forlorn
in their appearance at first, but that they gradually took pains to
make themselves respectable. The archbishop said, pleasantly, "When
they return to their right mind they appear _clothed_, also, and
sitting at the feet of Jesus."
The archbishop sent me afterwards a beautiful edition of his sermons
on Christian charity, embracing a series of discourses on various
topics of practical benevolence, relating to the elevation and
christianization of the masses. They are written with the same purity
of style, and show the same devout and benevolent spirit with his
other writings.
My thoughts were much saddened to-day by the news, which I received
this week, of the death of Mary Edmonson. It is not for her that I
could weep; for she died as calmly and serenely as she lived,
resigning her soul into the hands of her Savior. What I do weep for
is, that under the flag of my country - and that country a Christian
one - such a life as Mary's could have been lived, and so little said
or done about it.
