Genuine Religion the Best Friend of the People

To alleviate the anxieties of the laborious poor, and to increase the happiness of the common people, is the sincere aim of the writer of this Treatise. As the most effec­tual method of accomplishing this desirable object, he wishes to recommend to them, and to their families, the knowledge and the love of real religion: fully persuaded, that this alone can sufficiently support their minds under the various evils to which they are daily exposed.
Many are the snares of poverty, and se­vere the hardships experienced by such as are placed in the inferior stations of life. When suffering under agonizing solicitude, or cruel neglect, or all the humiliating circumstances of galling dependence; when the barrel of meal is consumed, and chil­dren weep for the supplies which their needy parents are unable to impart: when sickness unites with want to render their habitations dismal; when he on whose in­dustry their hopes were centred, is pierced by the arrows of death-how pitiable then is the state of such families! But far more pitiable still, if, under these calamities, they remain strangers to the satisfying joys, and animating hopes of Christianity; if they have lived in the mournful habits of im­piety, or are growing up in all the miseries of ignorance; if, amidst their complicated trials, felt and bewailed, they are destitute of the soothing consolations which enable believers to triumph in the midst of adver­sity.