8vo, 28pp. Disbound with blank leaf at rear. Slight vertical crease through the textblock, else Very Good. An appeal for charitable support of the "Fatherless and Widows' Society," noting that women in the best of health and circumstances would struggle to make a living, let alone those in difficulty. He calls out the "tyranny of employers" who do not pay women fairly for their labor, using the example of a seamstress making thirty cents on piecework that takes two days' labor and could never be sufficient to afford her basic necessities.

Rev. Ezra Stiles Gannett (1801-1871), grandson of Yale president Ezra Stiles, was a Unitarian minister in Boston who had a conservative approach to social reform. He was both anti-slavery and anti-abolitionist (He is quoted in a biography: “I may sympathize in their objects, while I dread and abhor their spirit.”) This "Sermon" is also characteristic of that dissonance--he identifies and professes outrage at a social problem, but demands pity and charity instead of reform.

"The age of chivalry has passed, when beautiful damsels were placed under the protection of gallant knights; but the time has not yet come for a Christian appreciation of the claims of decrepid and lonely females. A poor man may overcome the difficulties of his situation, and acquire a competent subsistence; but a poor woman, God help her, if she be left to herself! And she will be left to herself, unless the hand of charity be extended to her, for the hand of justice is closed against her." (14)