Page:Female Piety.djvu/171

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rnuusnxaxovsmu.. 187

be insensible to the sights and sounds affliction by which you are surrounded. The female heart is supposed to be the very dwelling-place of mercy, md an unfeeling woman is s libel upon her sex: lotmsdhynsturctoweepwith those thst weep, uid to ministsr, sl we showed in a former sermon, to the bodily woes of humanity, enter into the design of Providence, snd become a ministering angel in thedmmber ofsiokneus, Youhaveseeudmosc docked and demnm women who issue from A 'convmtlul establishment in the neighborhood of this town, on errands of mercy to the:bodes of sickness md poverty, deeming no cilice too rnenial, no service too self-denying to be performed, which can nllsviate the pains or promote the comfort of the sufferer. We would not question the purity cf their -motives or the tenderness of those ciiices whidh they perform for the children of want and woe; but it looks, nlterall, like a shallow device of the church which employs them to obtrude itself on public notice and to win oonverts to itseli We call upon you, without cutting the ties of your connection with society md abjuring all pretensions to the chsrscter ofwife and mother, to be our Sisters of Mercy, and to mske it your business and your pleasure to visit the scenes of sickness and the abodes of poverty. Even in youth, acquire the habits, the tendemess, the delicate tact of e nurse. Losthe that spurious sentimentality which can weep over the imaginary Woes of s novel, but turns sway either with n callous for n. coward heart tiom those real sneerings