0000 - Preface

PREFACE. To alleviate the anxieties of the laborious poor, and to increase the happiness of the common people, is the sincere aim of the writer of this Treatise. As the most effec­tual method of accomplishing this desirable object, he wishes to recommend to them, and to their families, the knowledge and the love of real religion: fully persuaded, that this alone can sufficiently support their minds under the various evils to which they are daily exposed.

Many are the snares of poverty, and se­vere the hardships experienced by such as are placed in the inferior stations of life. When suffering under agonizing solicitude, or cruel neglect, or all the humiliating circumstances of galling dependence; when the barrel of meal is consumed, and chil­dren weep for the supplies which their needy parents are unable to impart: when sickness unites with want to render their habitations dismal; when he on whose in­dustry their hopes were centred, is pierced by the arrows of death-how pitiable then is the state of such families! But far more pitiable still, if, under these calamities, they remain strangers to the satisfying joys, and animating hopes of Christianity; if they have lived in the mournful habits of im­piety, or are growing up in all the miseries of ignorance; if, amidst their complicated trials, felt and bewailed, they are destitute of the soothing consolations which enable believers to triumph in the midst of adver­sity.

Such ignorance of religion can scarcely fail to be productive of profligacy and wretchedness. Those who have never been taught to seek happiness in the ways of God, yet are eager for comfort, and are naturally led to place all their expectation of enjoying it in the intoxications of vice; their poverty, united with their ignorance, involves them in many snares, hurries them on to all the awful excesses of iniquity, and drowns them at last in guilt and perdition. Whereas, had they been trained up in the paths of piety and righteousness, they might have maintained an honourable character amidst all the snares of want, and enjoyed inward serenity amidst all the adversities of life. To attempt, therefore, the release of many from this mental misery, and to aim at conducting them forward in the paths of wisdom and peace, cannot be an object un­becoming a benevolent mind. With this design, and from an ardent desire of pro­moting so important an object, a friend presents to the commonalty in our land, a plain directory and monitor, written for their instruction, and sent into the world with earnest supplications to the Father of all, for its success in promoting the best in­terests of mankind.