PARENTS, CHURCH MEMBERS, AND SABBATH SCHOOL TEACHERS. EDITED BY J. A. ALBRO AND ASA BULLARD. AUGUST, 1846. TERMS FIFTY CENTS ON RECEIVING THE FIRST NUMBER. BOSTON: MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETY. O. C. DEAN, TREASURER, No. 13 CORNHILL. By payment of $10 and upwards, from June 13 to July 13. Attleboro'.-Jesse Carpenter, by his own subscription, Mrs. Nancy Carpenter, by her own subscription, in Rev. Mr. Belden's Society, Brimfield.-John C. Spring, by a sister, Keene, N. H.-Rev. Zedekiah S. Barstow, by the Sab. school of his Soc. Norwich, Ct.-Dea. Charles Coit, sup't., by Mrs. Mary R. McKie, . 184 186 - 187 188 188 · 190 - 10 00 10 00 10 00 - 10 00 DONATIONS TO THE SOCIETY, FOR ESTABLISHING AND SUSTAIN ING SABBATH SCHOOLS. From June 13, to July 13. Beverly. From the Washington St. Sab. School, per J. Lefavour, sup❜t. "Independence Offering from a friend, per Dea. Ezra Farnsworth, for the East, Brownville, Me.-From the Sabbath school in the Congregational Society, Chester Factories.-Independence Offering, from the Sabbath school, per Clintonville (Lancaster).-From the Sabbath school in Rev. J. M. R. Ea- Carver.-Independence Offering, in the Sabbath school per Dea. Thomas Cabotville. From members of Rev. S. G. Clapp's congregation, Danvers. Independence Offering from the Sabbath school in Rev. R. Tol- "Independence Offering in 2d Cong. Soc., per Jacob Perley, sup't. East Douglas.-From Miss A. C. Rogerson's class of little misses, Fitchburg.-From Miss Charlotte Cowden, Great Barrington.-From the Sabbath school in 1st Cong. Soc., per James Ipswich.-From the Sabbath school in 1st parish, per Geo. W. Heard, Esq., Leominster.-Independence Offering from the Sabbath school in Rev. Mr. North Bridgwater.-From the Sabbath school in Rev. Mr. Couch's Soc., per Dea. Simeon Packard, sup't., Norwich, Ct-Collected at a united meeting of 2d & 5th Con. Churches, 69 56 26 From Mrs. C. W. Rockwell, North Amherst.-Independence Offering in the Sab. school, "Contributions, per Rev. Geo. Cook, Norton.-Independence Offering in Sabbath school in Rev. Mr. Barrows' Pawtucket-From the Sabbath school in Rev. Mr. Blodgett's Society, 30 00 "L From the Infant Sabbath school in above Society, per Rev. Mr. Blodgett, 1864. Mar 1 THE CONGREGATIONAL VISITER. NO. 8....AUGUST, 1846.....VOL. III. THE SABBATH SCHOOL CONCERT. LETTER FROM REV. WM. M. ROGERS TO THE CENTRAL SABBATH SCHOOL, BOSTON. Cairo, Egypt, March 6th, 1846. MY DEAR CHILDREN,-I have thought of you very often since I have been away from Boston, and I send you this letter, believing that it will please you to hear from me. I write you from the land of Egypt, which is so often mentioned in the Bible, as the land where the children of Israel were so long in bondage, and from which God bore them out with wonderful miracles. Here is the river Nile, that ancient river, on whose banks the mother of Moses placed her little boy in an ark of bulrushes, daubed with the slime of the river, and your former superintendent, Mr. Hardy, and I, visited the place where it is said to have occurred. I can see now, why she used the mud of the Nile; for the people of this country use it now to daub their boats, and it keeps out water very well. Here is the river which once flowed blood at the bidding of Moses, under the direction of God; and here, too, the infant Saviour was brought, when his mother fled from the bloody designs of Herod. But the people of this land were very wicked many hundred years ago, and God was angry with them, and denounced his judgments 15 VOL. III. against them, by his holy prophets, and particularly by Ezekiel. You will find a part of his denunciations against them in Ezekiel 29: 1-17. I have passed through the land from the mouth of the Nile, up to Assonan, the Syene mentioned by the prophet, a distance of 700 miles, and every where it is clear that the curse of God now rests upon it for its sins. When the prophet wrote, it was one of the richest, wisest, and most powerful of the kingdoms of the earth, and no one could have anticipated that it would ever be, what Ezekiel said it would be,-the basest of kingdoms. But God has brought it all to pass, and it is the basest of kingdoms. The Persians conquered it, and then the Greeks, and then the Mohammedans, and for a thousand years and more it has had no native prince, but strangers have ruled it, and ground the people down to the dust. The old cities have disappeared, and mud huts are built among their ruins. I have seen many of their temples, the wonder of former times, and in their ruins still most noble structures, and I have frightened away the cormorants from their resting place, among their decayed columns. The buffaloes are herded, the sheep and goats are folded, the asses are stabled, where the old Egyptian bowed down at the altar of his god, and the Arabs live in, and among, and upon the ruins. The unclean dogs snarl and bark from the roofs, and in the chambers, once fragrant with incense, the air is now fetid with the abominations of bats and owls. But, children, I did not mean to speak of these things so much as of some others, which are to be remembered, when we read that God has said of Egypt, it should be the basest of kingdoms. The people of Egypt are very ignorant, and afraid to have a stranger look kindly on their children; and they leave them very filthy, and their eyes and face covered over with flies undisturbed. The reason is, they are so ignorant as to suppose, if you look kindly on a child, it is with an evil eye, and some mischief will befal it, and if they drive 1846.] Sabbath School Concert. 171 away the flies from its face, that it will become blind. I have not seen a clean child in all Egypt. The mothers love their children notwithstanding, but they know no better. When the children grow up, they have no books, or very few, and not one in a hundred learns to read. The present ruler of the country is Mehemet Ali, who has had a great many wars, and whose government has reduced the number of the people from 2,500,000 to 1,800,000, by the sufferings, and sickness, and deaths, which followed his plans to get more land and higher power. He required a great many soldiers, and was forced to take the able men, leaving the old and decrepid in the villages and towns. Now, the mothers here, when they had a little boy, were afraid that if he grew up to be a man, he would be taken to be a soldier, and they were accustomed to put out his right eye, so that he could not see to fire a musket, or they would cut off the first two joints of the forefinger of the right hand for the same reason, or draw out the eye tooth, so that he could not bite a cartridge to load his gun, or they would take a little bar of iron, and make it red hot, and then place it in the bend of the first joint of the forefinger, and double the finger over it until the flesh and sinews were so burnt and shrivelled, that the finger could not be straitened again. Is it not the basest of kingdoms, where the rulers compel mothers thus to cripple and disfigure their own children? I stood on the bank of the Nile, and four little boys came from a neighboring village to see the howágee or foreign gentlemen, and four of the five had lost the first two joints of the right hand forefinger, and the fifth had lost his eye. You may well thank God, children, that you live in a land where the Bible has made such horrors impossible, and where no ruler can take you away from home by violence to wage wicked wars. But remember, children, that if our own country should forget God and become vile, he who smote Egypt in the days of Moses, and whose rod is on her now, will make America, |