All hail to Gallia’s King!
Columbia’s great ally!”
And thus the great English orator of that day describes her: “It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles: and surely never lighted on this orb, which she scarcely seemed to touch, a more delightful vision! I saw her, just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Little did I dream I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords would have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.”
Look, now, through those prison bars. There, pale and mournful, upon a pallet of straw, rests one for whom the splendours of Versailles scarcely seemed enough. Her once bright locks, even in youth, are gray with fear and sorrow. She is in solitude; her husband in one cell, and her weeping children, torn from her and placed with brutal keepers, in another. And now her husband is borne forth to a bloody death. Again her prison doors unclose, and she comes forth, seated on the fatal car, her hands tied behind her back, surrounded by thousands, who shout with malignant joy as the fatal guillotine terminates her woes.
See that last and most innocent sufferer, the poor little Dauphin, every tender feeling crushed, deliberately instructed in vice, doomed to disgusting and degrading services, and, ere long, cruelly starved to death!
American mother, wife, sister, daughter, the same earthquake is trembling under your feet! If such an awful period agitates any portion of this land, it will be those raised by wealth and station as the objects of popular envy, who must first meet the storm. You sit now in peace and plenty; you spend your time in elegant pleasures, and, while absorbed in selfish enjoyment, you forget the young and destitute growing up around you. And as you embroider the flower, and twine the silk, and fold the riband, they are learning to sharpen the dagger, and twine the cord, and plant the cannon. Within a stone’s throw of that smiling child with golden locks, who now absorbs a mother’s thoughts, may be growing up, in the darkness of ignorance and vice, the very hand that, at some awful crisis, will grasp those locks in rage, and plant the dagger in that happy bosom.
And when, in some after hour of terror and distress, when the roar of musketry is heard, shooting down father and husband, and brother and friend; when the bells are tolling, and the drums beating, and the wife, mother, and daughter behold those they love best girding to meet the violators of law; when they catch the parting expression of flushed excitement, or stern determination, or serious foreboding, as the loved one departs, perhaps to be returned a breathless corse—then, in the hour of anxious solitude, will the solemn inquest be made for those ruffian minds, ruined by neglect; and the voice of the Lord God will be heard, walking in the trees of the garden, demanding, “Where is thy brother?” And the trembling response, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” will meet the stern rebuke, “What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.”
But why appeal to motives of fear and danger? Alas! those thousands and millions of neglected little ones in our land, they know not their wants or their danger, or they would raise their supplicating hands. Is there anything more appropriate than that gentle woman should be invoked to their aid? Is there anything more beautiful, more heavenly, than that she should spend her time, and thoughts, and means to rescue them? What is it that you would enjoy the most in after days, gazing at the fading beauties you have wrought in canvass, muslin, or lace, or looking around on the intelligent, useful, happy minds you have been instrumental in training, and who will rise up and call you blessed? True, you cannot gain this rich reward without some self-denying toil and persevering effort. But is it not worth the labour?
And when your eye is closing on earth, and the memories of the past are hovering around your pillow, who do you wish should meet your dying eye, the haggard faces of those ruined by your neglect, or the grateful smiles of those you have toiled to bless, who will bear you in their love and prayers, like seraph’s wings, to the opening gates of heaven; who will shine forever as stars in your crown of rejoicing?
And into that world of perfected benevolence and joy, who is it that shall enter and go no more out? It is those who, in this world, have followed the footsteps of Jesus Christ; who have lived, not for themselves, but for others; who, like him, have denied themselves daily to promote the salvation of the lost. Is not Jesus Christ presented as the bright and perfect example of self-denying benevolence, and is it not written, “If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his?”