of God; to think constantly that the happiness of a Christian will always be more in hope than in poffeffion; to remember that though deep and bitter fufferings are incident to our frame and ftate, yet the heaviest and the worst are those which man inflicts on man, or his own paffions on himfelf; that we are only truly and irremediably unhappy when we faften our defires on objects unsuitable or unattainable objects neither commenfurate to our higher nature, nor adapted to our future hope.

CHAP. XVI.

An Inquiry why fome Good Sort of People are not better.

THERE is a clafs of pleasing and amiable

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perfons whom it would be difficult not to love, and unjust not to refpect; but of whom, though candour obliges us to entertain a favourable hope, yet we are compelled to fay, that their general conduct is rather blamelefs than excellent; their practice rather unoffending than exemplary: that their character rather exhibits a capacity for higher attainments, than any demonftration that fuch attainments are actually made.

These are the people who, from their fobriety of deportment and orderly habits, we should be naturally led to expect would make a great proficiency in religion. They are feldom hurried into irregularities; difcretion is their cardinal virtue. They are

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frequently quoted as patterns of decorum ; the finger of reproach can seldom be pointed at their conduct; that of ridicule, never. They are not seldom kind and humane, feeling and charitable; they fill many relative duties in a manner which might put to the blush not a few, from whofe higher profeffion better things might have been expected.

"You have sketched a perfect character," methinks I hear fome angry reader exclaim. What more does fociety demand? What more would the most correct man require in his fon or his wife, his fifter or his daughter?

We are indeed most ready to allow, that few, comparatively, go fo far; we grant that the world would be a much lefs diforderly and vexatious fcene than it is, if the greater number reached these heights which we yet prefume to confider as inadequate to the requifitions of the Gospel, as infufficient to answer the claims of Christianity. Would it not be a very melancholy confideration,

if

if this most encouraging circumftance, of their being not far from the kingdom of God, fhould ever-which Heaven avert!prove a poffible reason for their not entering into it; if their being almoft Christians, should be the very preventing cause of their becoming altogether fuch?

Their education has been governed rather by proprieties than principles. They have learned to difapprove of hardly any thing in the way of pleasure for its own fake, but highly to reprobate the extremes to which disorderly people carry it. They cenfure a thing not so much for being wrong in itself, as for being immoderate in the degree. They condemn all the improper practices against which the world fets its face, but have not very diftinct ideas of the right and the wrong in any thing which it tolerates. Religion, which has made a part of their early inftruction, took its turn with the ufual accomplishments, though fubordinately with refpect to the earnestness with which it was inculcated, and with about the fame proportion

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portion of the time allotted to it, as minutes bear to hours. It was taught as a needful thing, but not as the one thing needful. Religion, however, continues to maintain its appropriate place in their reading, and, to a certain degree, to be adopted into their practice, bearing nearly the fame proportion to other objects as it did when they were initiated into its elements. They were bred in its forms, and in its forms they perfift to live, if the term live can be properly applied to any thing which is deftitute of the characters and properties of life. They live, it is true, but it is as the vegetable world lives in the winter's froft, which does not indeed kill it, but benumbs its powers, and fufpends its vitality.

They make a confcience of reading the Scriptures, but fometimes interpret them too much in their own favour, inftead of judging of the duties they inculcate by fuch properties and refults as they promise to produce. In making it their ftudy, they neglect to make it their standard.

They