Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOOK ONE, CHRISTIANITY THE BASIS OF SOCIAL LIFE. CHAPTER I. FIRST PRINCIPLES. O CHBISTIAK PHtLANTHROPY, HERO-WOBSHIP, AND THE ORIGIN AND END OF LAW. Proposing, in this book, to glance generally at a few of the characteristic social agencies of our time, it seems to us an orderly and perspicuous method to regard modern Christian philanthropy as a fitting representative of those agencies, and its consideration, for that reason, a meet introduction to their cursory survey. We shall not allege it to be a principal agency in our present and prospective social system. But we do think that, in its treatment, we are brought eye to eye with that problem on which the future of the free nations depends ; and that an inquiry into its fundamental principles, and a survey of its development, lead us by a natural path to the full statement and comprehension of that problem. With this statement we purpose concluding the present division of our subject. We consider, then, in the outset, the essential and fundamental ideas of Christian Philanthropy. We do not affirm that there is any thing positively new inthe idea of this philanthropy. It is as old as love. Its history began to be written in the first tear which fell from a human eye, over one whose only claim was pity, and whose only plea was sorrow. But we shall not be required to prove that there is such a thing in our day as " the philanthropic movement:" we may safely allege the fact that simple pity, love for the wretched as such, has become a more formal and recognizable power in our time than heretofore. Of this we speak. That our conception of Christian Philanthropy may be clearly perceived, and that it may be known at once what we believe to be its true nature, and what we are willing to stand by as its defensible p...