Short Sermons to News Boys; With a History of the Formation of the News Boys' Lodging House (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1866 Excerpt: ... tical movement of religious reform at once took its direction toward the masses--the poor, the outcast, the tempted and the slave. It was fortunate-that the religious guides of the nation did not set themselves against all these earnest impulses, and thus force the young and enthusiastic mind of the country into opposition to organized religion, and into apparent infidelity, as has so often been the result in Europe. The whole religious community seemed to recognize, more and more each day, that when Christ, in His definition of His ministry, made the final and highest term, "the preaching the gospel to the poor," He expressed the highest external duty of Christianity toward modern society. The great problem for all earnest thinkers was more and more, how to make manifest Christ and His spirit to the lowest classes, to the destitute, and outcast, and criminal. It was felt that the usual means of instruction and elevation through missions, and tracts, and chapels, and similar agencies, were not sufficient. There were evidently in the cities great masses of misery and evil which Christianity, through its existing means, Beldom influenced. How to preach the gospel to the poor? became the great question for all conscientious and religious persons. Among the various benevolent movements for the benefit of the masses, which originated from these convictions, between the years 1848 and '53, the most prominent peculiarity was their entire breaking away from the old methods of religions influence, and the adapting themselves to the practical wants of these classes. This has now become so general a principle through all city-missions in the whole country, that its novelty can hardly be recognized. But at that time it met with great opposition. To give a poor man brea...