man might imitate, and be happy? How important then that all means should be embraced, to recall the perfect model, that the imperfect might grow into a likeness. thereto. Blessed institution, adapted to the wants of sensual, forgetful man! Happy those who make use of its aid! Oh, it was an ever-memorable day, that solemn but cheerful Sabbath, in which I joined myself to the church of Christ in my native town. My mind could not but be thronged with thoughts; reviews of the past, high resolves for the future; all the affecting and sublime considerations of a divine religion; faith, hope, charity; man, and Christ, and God; heaven and eternity. My soul was so possessed with these great and solemn subjects, that I was scarcely conscious of what otherwise I might have shrunk from, the pursuing, fastening gaze of the whole congregation, as I moved up the central aisle, and stood before the covered table of communion, and my venerable pastor, to assent to the brief and simple form of admission to his church. His voice trembled, and his eye was moistened with unusual tenderness, as he spoke the words of reception to fellowship, and engaged to pray for, and watch over me, and asked my prayers and watching in return. I was the only young man he had thus received, for years, and it seemed as if he felt a more than pastoral, even a paternal affection for one who had alone, and unasked, entered into this new relation so interesting to his office. As the congregation retired, leaving me for the first time in the midst of communicants, most of them much my elders, I felt a sense of solitariness in the service, which should not be in the memorial of Him who would comprehend all in the bonds of fraternal love. Had the young who had all gone away, no gratitude, no desires after wisdom and purity, and that perfection of character which religion sets forth? But I had charity for the absent, for I well knew the reasons of their neglect, from the remembrance of my own early views. When I met some of my youthful acquaintance afterward, on the same day, there was a strangeness in their looks towards me, as if I was not the same being as before. Was it because I was no longer among the young, and had lost all my sympathy with the age? I endeavored to manifest by a cheerful serenity and a lively in-. terest in their society, that I had not lost the vivacity and the freshness of youth, notwithstanding I had sat down with their parents in the solemnity of the sacrament. Soon after this I left my native home, no longer to consider it as my own proper place of abode. I exchanged its quiet seclusion for new and strange and more crowded scenes. I was now to meet the populous, trying, and tempting world. But I trust that I had an armor of God, the preparation of the gospel of peace. I had embraced what is called Liberal Christianity; and I can with truth say, that it had great influence in keeping me unspotted from the world, and steadfast amid its changes. I have since lived some years, and been in various situations. I have been disappointed in plans, have buried the beloved, have been sick and near death myself, and my religion has never failed to alleviate, cheer, and sustain. I have read and thought much, but my peculiar views have not changed, except as the dawn changes in spreading and brightening toward the perfect day. MR TUCKERMAN'S TENTH SEMIANNUAL REPORT, AS A MINISTER AT LARGE IN BOSTON. PUBLISHED BY THE American Unitarian Association. BOSTON: GRAY AND BOWEN, 141 WASHINGTON street. Price 6 Cents. "The system which produces the happiest moral effects, will be found most beneficial to the interest of the individual, and to the general weal. Upon this basis the science of political economy will rest at last, when the ponderous volumes by which it has been overlaid, shall have sunk by their own weight into the dead sea of oblivion." Southey's Essays. Vol. I. pp. 181, 182. "The gentlest method which I know, and at the same time one of the most effectual of the methods, of stopping the progress of vice, is by removing the temptations to it.” — Fielding's “ Causes of the Increase of Robbers." Works, Vol. X. p. 351. "It is the misfortune of this country, (England) and it has been the calamity, and may prove the destruction of Ireland, that the different classes of society have not a sufficient bond and connexion of intercourse.". Sir Thomas Barnard, on the Education of the Poor, p. 60. PRINTED BY ISAAC R. BUTTS. REPORT. To the Executive Committee of the AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION. GENTLEMEN, The term poverty, as I have used it in my Reports, signifies a dependence upon charity for the means of subsistence. I consider no one, therefore, in the strict sense of the term, as poor, who is not thus dependent; and every one who thus depends on charity, during the time of this dependence, and in the degree of it, is poor. In view of this definition, in my Report of May 5th, 1830, I divided the poor into three classes. 1st, those who are only occasionally, and partially poor. 2d, those who are frequently, and considerably poor. And, 3d, those who are constantly, and absolutely poor. Between these general divisions, I observed, that there are examples of every supposable degree, and kind of poverty; and I brought before you such examples as I could, within the limits I must prescribe to myself, of the character and condition of each of these classes of the poor among us. My only object, however, then was, to expose the injustice of the sentiment which is sometimes formed of the whole of the poor, from the specimens which we see abroad as vagrants, or which come to our |