If tears bedim the enlightened eye,

’Tis at the fall of human kind;

Or pity breathe a nobler sigh,

’Tis o’er the lost, immortal mind.

Say then shall babes whom tenfold night,

Whom guilt and ignorance o’ershade,

Ask at your hands the gospel light;

And have the genial boon delay’d.

Must sin and shame, and horror hide,

An embryo race through future years;

When ’twas for such that Jesus died,

And angels shed rejoicing tears.

Ah! no, your yearning bosoms bleed,

On us you urge the gift benign

May heavenly love that grace succeed,

And bless with patronage divine.

Text: Attwater Papers, acc. 76, II.A.2, p. 18; Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 5, p. 82. John Saffery founded a Sunday School at Brown Street in 1792, and in 1801, expanded the school to meet not only on Sundays but also on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. According to the church historian, the church rented the Joiners’ Hall in Salisbury for 1s. a week to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. The school closed in 1821. See G. A. Moore, The Story of Brown Street Baptist Church, Salisbury, 1655-1955 (Salisbury: [n.d.], 1955), p. 22.