The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-10-04 00:00:00

THE WESTMINSTER ABBEY PENSION
FUND.

The Westminster Abbey Pension Fund, in aid of
the aged and necessitous daughters of printers, was
established in 1872, and owes its connection with the
Abbey to the fact that the first English printing press
was set up within the Abbey precincts by William
Caxton. The inaugural appeal was made on the 28th
January, 1872, by Dean Stanley, and this year the
sermon was preached last Sunday by Canon Kingsley.
The whole of that portion of the Abbey which is
thrown open for divine service was densely crowded.
The rev, gentleman, whose discourse had no special
reference except in its closing portion, to the pension
fund, took for his text the 119th Psalm 31st verse,
"I have stuck unto thy testimonies; d Lord con-
found me not." To be confounded and put to
shame was the dread of every believing Christian,
but there were those who neither knew what it
meant nor dreadful the consequences. Who were
they? First, there were the silly people, the solemn
fools, who thought themselvee already clever enough,
who never wished to learn, and who thought it "had
form," to use the modern slang, to treat the most sacred
matters otherwiee than se • jest. There were also the
mean people who, getting what they wished, cared
not how they got It; and next, the aelfsconceited
eople, who scorned advice, and who thought all the
world, when it differed from them, med. These
persons would learn with • vengeance what being
confounded meant, although he believed that even
in the bottomless pit they would not confess
that they were wrong. Milton told them that
even there the condemned spirits held excellent
arguments to show that they were right. To be con-
founded, to be ashamed when in the wrong, to be sen-
sitive as to the good opinion of our fellow-men, was
the seed of eternal life. Modesty, bashfulness, that
fine old English word, shamefacedness, was what Plato
had called the material out of which goodness was made,
and those who denounced or decried it were only doing
the devil's work. Did they not see in dumb animals
evidence of the capability of feeling shame, of being
confounded? and was not, the higher the organization,
the stionger and plainer the evidence? Some would
tell them that it was only weakness to feel shame.
Why, they said, should you care for the opinion of
your fellow-men? Yes, if you slid what was right;
bat if you did not, what then? If any man told him
that he did not care for the opinion of his fellow-men,
he should first suspect that the man was not speak-
ing the truth and, secondly, he snould hope that he
was not speaking the truth. If such a person told him
that the old prophets and sages cared nothing for the
opinions of their fellow men, he should reply that he
knew nothing &bent the matter, Isaiah, Ezekiel,
Jeremiah, and St. Paul, were all men of the greatest
piety and the greatest patriotism; and they were
notoriously ,ensitive as to what was thought of them
by their fellow-men. Nay, was net the Saviour
himself sensitive as to the opinion of the Jew, who
were His colustrymen ins the flesh ? To be sensitive,
to fear being confounded wag the peculiarity of
virtuous youth, and woe be to him who attempted to
sneer a nay that sensitiveness from the heart of youth.
After sore further general illustrations, the preacher
proceeded to apply his text to the special object of the
day. There was no time when a man felt so utterly
confounded as ellen on his deathbed, he remembered
that he was leaving a destitute widow and children be-
hind him. The printer's family was of ten prematurely
deprivei if its head. He worked in an unwholesome
atmosphere, in a stooping posture, and under the in.
Sterns of gaslight day by day; and, what was worse,
' eight by night, until his lungs and his digestion PM.
cumbed under influences for which God had never
designed them. The man soon exchanged the printing
room for the sick room or the hospital, and surely snob
anise had aright to expect from that public which hail
literally used him no, and thrown him away like a
worn-out tool, that it should do something at least for
those who were left behind, so as that in his last hour he
should not be confounded in his tenderest affections.
Let him aped, then, on behalf of the Printers' Cor-
poration Fond. especially the fund which had been in-
augurated in the previ.eis year. The daughters of
printers having reached the age of 60 years were to
have • pension of £lO. How little! And yet sufficient
funds to grant it had not been raised! Let thorn, then,
give liberally, and save these aged women from the
confusion and shame of face of having to receive parish
ply. To escape that hard fate many tenderly nurtured
and well educated women had shut themselves up in
their miserable lo.'ginge, turned their facet to the wall,
and died, as a worn-out animal might retire to its dea
to die. Let them remember that an aged single
worsen was exceptionally helpless, and let them enable
her to say, "0 God, in Trice have I trusted ; let me
not be confounded." -

• -
The collection which SVM made at the conclusion of
the services amounted to £93 104.