which, after an independent course of active usefulness for above thirty
years, has been in some measure affiliated to the District Visiting
Society, though still retaining the valuable superintendence of those
ladies, under whose judicious management it has been productive of such
essential service. Its purpose is to provide bags of baby-linen and
other fitting articles for respectable married women during the month of
their confinement; these are entrusted for distribution to the members of
the Committee, who usually grant them on the recommendation of a
subscriber, or of the Visitor of the District in which the applicant
resides. A copy of the New Testament is sent at the same time, which is
often not without its influence in suggesting to the recipient the
promise that, though in “sorrow she is to bring forth children,
notwithstanding she shall be saved in child-bearing, if she continue in
faith, and charity, and holiness, with sobriety.” Those possessing
larger means, who have been preserved in this great peril and danger,
need not be told that next to the accustomed offering at the Altar, there
is no more appropriate object for the pecuniary acknowledgments of a
thankful spirit, than an Institution claiming to ameliorate those very
sufferings from which they have in mercy been so recently delivered.
But the question of support and maintenance soon follows upon the birth
of the infant. The poor mother cannot afford to remain at home all day
to tend her child. What then becomes of her babe? Shall it be consigned
to the care of some aged neighbour, at a cost of a third part of her
daily earnings; or must the education of an elder daughter be interfered
with, that she may become its nurse? Both these pernicious alternatives
have been superseded by the