Reports of Ministry at Large in Lowell to Missionary Society Connected with South Parish (Volume 1-4) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos or missing text. Not indexed. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1845. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... winter and spring. Conversation, instruction in innocent amusements, singing, with now an inculcation of profitable information, and then a moral address, combined, proved a highly successful experiment in the formation of character and manners, and in the attempt to teach early the mind, by happy experience, the difference between sensual pleasure and pure social improving enjoyment. A frequent eye witness wrote to a distant friend, " I could not have imagined that a hundred or more of such undisciplined spirits, as I knew them to have been, could have been subdued to such entire decorum and propriety, and that they could enter into a large variety of amusements without any clashing, and with such hearty enjoyment and good feeling." Very simple means at a simple age may accomplish mightier results than the most powerful appliances and efforts against fixed habits. Do not the poor need to have the door of happy experiences and elevating refining influences opened to them, to raise them above the power of low temptation and the misery of sin? Farther, in the summer the children have been assembled to see the wonders the microscope reveals. And when insect life has departed, and the flowers are gone, at the time of the harvest moon, a new avenue of intelligence has been opened to them by the eye directed to the telescope. This we have owed to the kindness of Mr. W. Wickersham. The autumn also brought on a fruit festival. A few friends of the poor furnished a bountiful supply. There was a rare enjoyment of the good things of Providence. And occasion was taken to set forth the lines and principles of fruit property, and enforce the commandment not to steal. A deeper interest and effect never came to the children of the Chapel from words against theft. In this ...