A book of earnest lives

Front matter

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EST LI V E£

Preface

THE stern critic from his Rhadamanthine chair has of late been pleased to fulminate against what he stigmatizes as "compilations;" yet I put forward the present volume as avowedly a " compilation " only, — I hope as one which will have some interest and attraction for the general reader. The number of persons who will have the leisure and means to refer to original sources, or, referring to them, will have the tact and skill to use them properly, must always be limited, and if "compilations " are to be prohibited, a very large class of readers will be deprived of all facilities for acquiring knowledge on a vast variety of subjects. The work of the compiler, if humble, is by no means easy ; he must be able to analyse and compare, and to place the facts he collects in a lucid order and agreeable form. In truth, he does not so much compile as conaense^ and in a single volume is often called upon to present the. results obtained from the patient study of half a hundred.

However this may be, I am ready to acknowledge that in the following pages I have been indebted to a considerable number of authorities, from whom I have endeavoured to glean what would best serve my object^ and enable me to place before the reader some striking illustrations of Christian chivalry, of heroic effort and enterprise in the fields of religious progress and the charities of civilization. I have brought together a goodly

PREFACE.

company of educational reformers, of Christian missionaries, of philanthropists, of Good Samaritans ; men and women who have dedicated their lives to the great work of making their fellow-creatures better, purer, happier. These are examples which we all may imitate in our different spheres. Studying their noble careers, we may learn to appreciate aright the law of human kindness, and to understand how, if it were universally acted upon, the vast sum of human misery would gradually be reduced ; and this will lead us to do, each in his own little circle, what it may be in our power to do, for the ignorant and the afflicted, the strangers who fall among thieves and lie^ by the wayside, bleeding from their many wounds. O reader, do not pass them by! Do not be deaf to the voice of pain and sorrow ! " Shrink from no offices of love, even though they should be painful and perilous," always doing unto others as thou wouldst that others should do unto thee, and, unostentatiously but earnestly, following in the steps of the Good Samaritan.