^^- the case of that one author, and the next, a?id the next again, their own modes of opinion ? How many of them were aware, and acted on the conviction, of the importance of a devout intercourse with heaven, in order to their being truly wise them- selves, and to their being the successful teachers of wisdom ? How many of them were actuated by a genuine desire to benefit their fellow-mortals? What may be conjectured as to the degree of complacency with which many of them have since, in a state where they better knew the truth of things, and better knew themselves, regarded the spirit in which they speculated, and the tendency of what they left to speak in their name after they were gone? And how much have they actually done for truth and righteousness in the world? Do not the con- tents of these accumulated volumes constitute a chaos of all discordant and contradictory principles, theo- ries, representations of fact, and figurings of ima- gination ? Could I not instantly place beside each other the works of two noted authors, who maintain for truth directly opposite doctrines, or systems of doctrine; and then add a third book which explodes them both ? I can take some one book, in which the prime spirits of the world, through all time, are brought together, announcing the speculations which they, respectively, proclaimed to be the essence of all wisdom, protesting with solemn censure, or sneer- ing contempt, against the dogmas and theories of one another, and conflicting in a huge Babel of all ima- ginable opinions and vagaries.* Within these as- For example, the work of Brucker. XI sembled volumes, how many errors in doctrine may there not be maintained; how many bad practical principles palliated, justified, or displayed in seduc- tive exemplification; how many good ones endea- voured to be supplanted ; how many absurdities and vain fancies set forth in plausible colours ! Is it not as if the intellect of man had been surrendered to be the sport of some malicious and powerful spiritual agent, who could delight in playing it through all traverses, freaks, and mazes of fantastic movement, mocking at its self-importance, diverted at its follies, gratified most of all when it is perverted to the greatest mis- chief; and malignantly providing for the perpetua- tion of the effect of all this, through subsequent time, by instigating the ablest of the minds thus sported with, to keep their own perversions in opera- tion on posterity through the instrumentality of their books? If such a thing might be as the interven- tion of the agency of a better and more potent intel- ligence, to cause, by one instantaneous action on all those books, the obliteration of all that is fallacious, pernicious, or useless in them, what millions of pages would be blanched in our crowded libraries ! The man who is supposed to be thoughtfully passing his eye over a large array of books may make such reflections, without being guilty of arrogance. It is not supposed that he can be intimately ac- quainted with the contents of the majority of them, or that he is assuming to be the infallible judge how much might justly be doomed to oblivion in those which he has examined. But being apprized, in a general way, of the qualities of a large proportion of them; having learned something of the characters of xu many of the authors; and to what class, or party, or school, to what faith, or in some instances no faith, to what prevailing system of an age or nation, or to what singularities of opinion, they were severally ad- dicted, he necessarily knows that the multifarious col- lection contains innumerable things at variance with intellectual and moral rectitude. He knows, that if each author had one living disciple wholly obsequious to him, and if all these disciples could be brought together, there would be a company in which almost every error of the human understanding, and every wrong disposition and practice, would have an advo- cate. Such ideas, arising in the exterior survey of the works of so many intellects, may yield some instruc- tion to a reflective man. While the swarm of no- tions and conceits of fancy comes upon his mental sight thick and tumultuous, and as lawlessly capri- cious in their shapes as the imps figured as throng- ing about the magician, he may reflect what the reason of man, which should have been the light and glory of such a creature of God, has become, and become capable of producing, through some disas- trous lapse into disorder. He may consider what the rational faculty has been, and would ever be, in the absence of divine revelation ; and also what ne- cessity there is for a corrective and regulating in- fluence from above on the mind, if, notwithstanding that revelation, it can have wantoned into so many aberrations. It will be shown him under what ill omens he will apply himself to the study of the most important subjects, without simplicity in his motives, and a conscientious care of the procedure of his Xlll judgment. He may think, and deplore to think, what mischief may have sprung from the intellectual obliquity, the pride, the turpitude, the irreligion, or even the carelessness, of one mind of great powers of seduction. He may be mortified to see how folly can link itself to intelligence, as if to expose it to scorn ; while he reflects how many men of superior intellect, who therefore ought not to have been the dupes of a phantasm, have been impelled to the most intense exertion by the passion to be renowned in this world, where they were to stay so short a time — to be renowned in it, even after they should have passed away beyond the possible enjoyment of their fame: and a sentiment of mingled contempt and pity will arise at the failure of these anticipations in the case of some of them, whose earnest, indefatigable labours have barely preserved their names from obli- vion. While his look is arrested by the works of some of those of highest distinction, splendid in literary achievement and lasting fame, it may be sug- gested to his thoughts, with respect to one of them and another, whether, on a Christian estimate of things, he would be deliberately willing, were it pos- sible, to shine in all that splendour in his own and a succeeding age, on the condition of being just of the same spirit toward God and the best interests of mankind, as those celebrated men. While pro- nouncing their names, and looking at these volumes, in which they have left a representative existence on earth, left the form and action of their minds em- bodied in a more durable vehicle than their once ani- mated clay, how striking to think, that somewhere, and in some certain condition, they themselves are XIV existing still — existing as really and personally as when they were revolving the thoughts and writing the sentences which fill these books ! From the character of these images of their minds, these en- shrined statues, created to receive homage for them after they are gone, what may be deemed of their present condition elsewhere? The musing of our contemplatist may at times be led to solemn conjec- tures at the award which these great intellectual performers have found in another state; and he fol- lows some of them with a very dark surmise. His eye may rest on a book inscribed with a name far less " proudly eminent" in the honours of genius and talent ; but a work which has unquestionably done very great, and almost unmixed good. And he may be reminded of that sovereignty of the Governor of the world in his selection and appoint- ment, by which, minds greatly below the highest order of natural ability may be rendered pre-eminent in .usefulness. It may also occur to him, diverting for an instant from all the ranks and varieties of those who have aspired to be teachers of mankind, to reflect how many humble spirits, that never at- tempted any of the thousand speculations, nor re- velled in the literary luxuries, contained in these books, have nevertheless passed worthily and hap- pily through the world, into a region where it may be the appointed result and reward of fervent piety, in inferior faculties, to overtake, by one mighty bound, the intellectual magnitude of those who had pr-eviously been much more powerful minds. And finally, when he has such evidence that this world has been always a tenebrious and illusory scene, for XV the search after truth by a spiritual nature itself weak, perverted, and obscured, he may surely feel some aspirations awakened toward that other world, where the objects of intelligence will be unveiled to faculties rectified and nobly enlarged for their con- templation. Thus far the instructive reflections which even the mere exterior of an accumulation of books may suggest, are supposed to occur in the way of think- ing of the authors. But the same books may also excite some interesting ideas, through their less ob- vious, but not altogether fanciful, association with the persons who may have been iheir readei'S or pos- sessors. The mind of a thoughtful looker over a range of volumes, of many dates, and a considerable proportion of them old, will sometimes be led into a train of conjectural questions: — Who were they that, in various times and places, have had these in their possession ? Perhaps many hands have turned over the leaves, many eyes have passed along the lines. With what measure of intelligence, and of approval or dissent, did those persons respectively follow the train of thoughts ? How many of them were hon- estly intent on becoming v/ise by what they read ? How many sincere prayers were addressed by them to the Eternal Wisdom during the perusal? How many have been determined, in their judgment or their actions, by these books ? What emotions, temptations, or painful occurrences, may have inter- rupted the reading of this book, or of that? In how many instances may a reader have shut one of them, to indulge in a folly or a vice, of which that XVI very book had warned him to beware ? Some of these volumes are histories of the life and death of good men : how many readers may have proceeded along the narrative, approving and admiring ; and, envying the happy termination of the course, have said, ** Let me die the death of the righteous," and nevertheless have pursued a contrary course, and come to a melancholy end ? May not some one of these books be the last that some one person lived to read ? Many that have perused them are dead ; each made an exit in a manner and with circum- stances of its own; what were the manner and cir- cumstances in each instance ? It was a most solemn event to that person ; but how ignorant concerning it am I, who now perhaps have my eye on the book which he read the last ! What a power of associa- tion, what an element of intense significance, would invest some of these volumes, if I could have a mo- mentary vision of the last scene of a number of the most remarkable of their former readers ! Of that the books can tell me nothing; but let me endeavour to bring the fact, that persons have read them and died, to bear with a salutary influence on my own mind while I am reading any of them. Let me cherish that temper of spirit which is sensible of in* timations of what is departed, remaining and mingling with what is present, and can thus perceive some monitory glimpses of even the unknown dead. What multiplied traces of them, on some of these books, are perceptible to the imagination, which beholds successive countenances long since " changed and sent away," bent in attention over the pages I And the minds which looked from within through those XVll countenances, conversing with the thoughts of other minds perhaps long withdrawn, even at that time, from among men — what and where are they now? Among the representations of the objects of faith, contained in any of these works, what passages may they be which approach the nearest to a description of that condition of existence to which those readers were transferred, after closing the book for the last time? If I could have a sign, when I happen to fall on some page dark with portentous images of the evil which awaits the impious and wicked, that a certain former reader carelessly and presumptuously dared the experiment, and has found a reality corre- sponding to those menaces, but more tremendous ; or a sign, when I am reading sentences animated with noble and delightful ideas of the felicity which awaits the faithful, that a certain preceding reader, (and suppose him signified by name,) is now in the ex- perience of a fact, true in principle to these antici- pations, but far transcending in degree, how power- fully should I be arrested at those passages, as if I were come to an opening from the invisible world, through which I could hear " sounds of lamenta- tion and woe," or songs of triumph, from the iden- tical beings who, at a certain hour of the past, looked on these lines ! There is actually a person telling me, that he looked once on these very descriptions, these emblems, which are at this moment before my sight, and that he, the same person, is, at this time that I am looking at them, overwhelmed or enrap- tured by the reality. But I, that am come after him, to read these representations now, do I solemnly consider that I am myself making my election of the XVIU yet unseen good or evil, and that very soon I shall leave the books in my turn, and arrive at the con- sequence ? Sometimes the conjectural reference to the former possessors and readers of books, seems to be rendered a little less vague, by our finding, at the beginning of an old volume, one or more names written, in such characters, and perhaps accompanied with such dates, that we are assured those persons must long since have done with all books. The name is generally all we can know of him who inserted it ; but we can thus fix on an individual as actually having possessed this volume; and perhaps there are here and there certain marks which should indicate an attentive perusal. What manner of person was he? What did he think of the sentiments, the passages which I see that he particularly noticed ? If there be opinions here which I cannot admit, did he believe them ? If there be counsels here which I deem most just and important, did they eflPectually persuade him ? Was his conscience, at some of these passages, disturbed or calm ? In what manner did he converse on these subjects with his associates? What were the most marked features of his char- acter, what the most considerable circumstances of his life, in what spirit and expectations did he ap- proach and reach its close ? The book is perhaps such a one as he could not read, without being co- gently admonished that he was going to his great account ; he went to that account — how did he meet and pass through it? This is no vain reverie. He, the man who bore and wrote this name, did go, at a particular time, though unrecorded, to surrender him- XIX self to his Judge. But I, who handle the book that was his, and observe his name, and am thus directing my thoughts into the dark after the man, I also am in progress toward the same tribunal, when it will be proved, to my joy or sorrow, whether I have learned true wisdom from my books, and from my reflections on those who have possessed and read them before. But it may be, that the observer's eye fixes on a volume which instantly recalls to his mind a person whom he well knew ; a revered parent perhaps, or a valued friend, who is recollected to have approved and inculcated the principles of the book, or perhaps to have given it to the person who is now looking at it, as a token of regard, or an inoffensive expedient for drawing attention to an important subject. He may have the image of that relative or friend, as in the employment of reading that volume, or in the act of presenting it to him. This may awaken a train of remembrances leading away from any rela- tion to the book, and possibly of salutary tendency ; but also, such an association with the book may have an effect, whenever he shall consult it, as if it were the departed friend, still more than the author, that uttered the sentiments. The author spoke to any one indifferently, to no one in particular ; but the sentiments seem to be especially applied to 7ne, when they come in this connexion with the memory of one who was my friend. Thus he would have spoken to me, thus, in effect, he does speak to me, while I think of him as having read the book, and regarded it as particularly adapted to me; or seem to behold him, as when reading it in my hearing, and some- XX times looking off from the page to make a gentle enforcement of the instruction. He would have been happy to anticipate, that, whenever I might look into it, my remembrance of him would infuse a more touching significance, a more applying principle, into its important sentiments; thus retaining him, though invisibly, and without his actual presence, in the exercise of a beneficent influence. But indeed I can, at some moments, indulge my mind to imagine something more than this mere ideal intervention to reinforce the impression of truth upon me; insomuch that, supposing it were permitted to receive intima- tions from those who have left the world, it will seem to me possible that I might, when looking into some parts of that book, in a solitary hour of night, per- ceive myself to be once more the object of his atten- tion, signified by a mysterious whisper from no visible form ; or by a momentary preternatural lu- minousness pervading the lines, to intimate that a friendly intelligence, that does not forget me, would still and again enforce on my conscience the dictates of piety and wisdom which I am reading. And shall it be as nothing to me, for effectual impression, that both my memory recalls the friend as when living, in aid of these instructions, and that my ima- gination, without any discord with my reason, appre- hends him, when now under a mightier manifestation of truth, as still animated with a spirit which would, if that were consistent with the laws of the higher economy, convey to me yet again the same testimony and injunctions? Is all influential relation dissolved by the withdrawment from mortal intercourse ; so that let my friends die, and I am as loose from their XXIU within the view of our mind, with any distinctness of apprehension. But it is easy to represent to our- selves a few instances of so general a description, that it must be certain there have been many such. And we may perhaps be indulged in the hope of in- ducing somewhat of a serious and favourable predis- position, in some one or other, whose attention may hereafter be drawn to the work, by employing the remainder of this Essay in specifying a few exempli- fications of the manner of reception and attention, which the book may be imagined to have found, with persons of several supposed characters of mind ; and suggesting, in each case, some of the appropriate considerations. We would wish to fall on such questions, persuasives, or expostulations, as might have been pertinently addressed, and possibly in some instances were addressed, to the persons so described, by a sensible religious friend ; whose character we may be allowed to personate, in representing how his office might be performed. It would be of little use to expatiate on the sup- position, (not an improbable one,) that such a book may casually, at one time or another, have fallen under the transient notice of a decided unbeliever in revealed religion ; an unbeliever, therefore, in effect, in religion altogether. We can easily conceive the supercilious air, and the note of scorn, at the sight of what cost the excellent Author so much earnest la- bour, with the most pure and benevolent intention, and has occupied so many thousand hours of the grave attention of readers ; what has been the mean of awakening many thoughtless spirits to seriousness; XXIV what has, in not a few instances, opportunely occurred to decide a mind wavering in the most momentous of all practical questions ; and what has by many been gratefully recollected, near the close of life, as having greatly contributed to the cause of its closing well. He could not be unapprized of such things belonging to its history, unless we suppose him more ignorant of the extension and effect of what may be called our religious literature, than is quite consistent with the character of a well-informed man, which we may be sure he claimed. But we may believe that the knowledge of this did not at all modify the tone of contempt, in which he repeated the title of the book, to give it a new turn: "Rise and Progress of — delusion, superstition, nonsense ! Rise of an ignis fatuiis^ from fermenting ignorance, to glimmer and ramble in a progress to extinction and nothing !" And he was elated in the self-complacency of being so much more wise and fortunate than all such writers, and all their believing readers. But W?a5 it a self-complacency quite entire and un- mingled, or which could be maintained in steady uni- form tenor, through the diversity of circumstances, and the varying moods of the mind? Let us suppose that, soon after his indulging this contempt of the book and its subjects, some grievous occurrence, or even the mere unexplained fluctuation of feeling, reduced him for a while to a somewhat reflective or gloomy temper; and that just then one of his own fraternity turned in to see him, and happened to catch sight of the same book, — if indeed it be an admissible supposition, that it could have been suf- fered to remain any where near him. We may XXV imagine the visitant to regard the book with the same disposition as his friend ; and let it be supposed, that he went into a strain of congratulation something like the following : — What a noble privilege of eleva- tion we enjoy over those silly dupes of imposture and superstition, the authors of these works, (such of them as really think as they write,) and their dis- ciples, who gravely and honestly believe what they read ! To think what a mighty concern these simple people are always making of their souls, talking of their spiritual nature, their immortal principle, their infinite value ! Whereas we, by virtue of reason disenchanted and illuminated, could tell them that this soul, so fondly idolized, so ludicrously extolled, is nothing more than an accident of corporeal or- ganization, and necessarily perishes with the material frame — with the body, as they call it in contradis- tinction, and speak of it in terms of comparative con- tempt, as if they possessed something incomparably more noble. They are for ever, too, referring to a Supreme Being, with whom they fancy they are standing in some mysterious and sublime relation. They talk of his favour, his providence, his grace,' and actually imagine they can hold a direct com- munication with him, indulging a fantastic notion of some special good to be obtained from him by im- portunate solicitation. What an inflation of vanity I to fancy that such a being (if there be such a one) must be continually thinking oithem ,- that he should care about their dispositions and deportment toward him ; and that they can attract his special attention, and constrain him to give peculiar tokens of his B 15 XXVI favour. And what a wretched bondage of supersti- tion, to be, at every step, in every practical question, with respect to every inclination and emotion, and with the sacrifice of whatever their own immediate interest may plead, under the constraint of an ima- ginary obligation to consult the will of some invisible and unknown authority ! Our privilege of sounder reason reduces and restores us to ourselves, from all "such visionary amplitude of relations; and exempts ns from all the vain solicitudes and distractions of an unremitting endeavour to live in consistency with them. It is enough that we hold our transient being under certain laws of nature, fixed in the system of the world, to which it is more easy to sub- mit, than to the will and continual interference of a formal and foreign authority. Our subjection to these laws we cannot help, but are happy to take our destiny under it, with the free allowance to fol- low our own inclinations as far as we can. If there be an Almighty Power, we may well believe he has other afFairs to mind, than that of interfering with us while we are minding our own. It is true, these deluded people are persuaded that he has made an express communication to men, declaring the relations in which they stand, and announcing his will. And indeed it must be con- fessed to be quite miraculous, that so many things concur to make a semblance of evidence that there has been such a communication. But let us not trouble ourselves about the matter; it is absurd to imagine there can have been any such anomaly in the course of things, any such arbitrary substitution XXVll for the dictates of our reason : our license of actino" as we desire, would be surrendered in believing it ; and we ivill not believe it. To crown the whole set of delusions which these people call their faith, they are actually persuaded that there remains for men a conscious existence after death ; a perpetual existence, they say, in a state bearing a retributive relation to what they shall have been in this life. And they are elated with the hope, and vehemently stimulated to exertions for the attainment of an eternal felicity. A magnificent dream,, certainly, for those who can lay their sober senses aside, to admit the illusion. Nor can we deny, that, through the medium of such a notion, these enthusiasts have a view of death vastly differ- ent from ours, and feel an augmented interest in their existence, as they approach near the end of what they are calling its introductory stage. To hear them talk, one would think they had received messengers or visions from another world, to inform them of a splendid allotment and reception already prepared for them there, and of friends impatient for their arrival. And it is a notorious fact, that, on the strength of such a presumption, great numbers of the devotees to this flnth have resigned their life with exultation, not a few of them under tortures inflicted for their fidelity to this their superstition. Well, the delusion and the existence broke up to- gether. And for the present race of pious fools, let them expend their cares, their passions, their life, their very souls, upon their adored fallacy; while we, on a higher ground, can be amused to see them led on. by a phantom, which ere long will mock at B 2 . • XXVIU their sudden fall, one after another, into nothing. We envy them not the ambitious aspirings which cheat them out of the enjoyment of this world, never, assuredly, to repay them in another. If we lose any thing worth calling pleasure, in being destitute of that hope which flatters them with images of a happy futurity, we have an ample compensation in the riddance of that fear which visits even some of them, in their gloomy moments, with alarms of a miserable one. Besides, a happiness of such a na- ture as they dream of, would be little congenial with the inclinations which actuate us, and which w.e have neither power nor desire to alter. Our wisdom is, to make the most that we can, in the indulgence of these inclinations, of the world that we are in. We hope in good fortune, that our life may be long and prosperous; and if any thing of a sombre hue should threaten to come over its latter stages, through in- firmities and the evident approach of its termination, we shall have the resource of philosophy and fate; and may find some remaining amusements that will please and divert us to the last. And when, at ♦ length, we are forced out of the world and existence, we shall have no consciousness of our loss. How insensible, happily for us, we, or rather the dust that once composed us, will be, while thousands of deluded creatures will be occupied with such books as the Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, and with the gravest earnestness afflicting themselves with a superstitious discipline for the attainment of an ima- ginary heaven, with the frequent intrusion of the dread of an equally fictitious hell. Now, could the supposed speaker, without plainly XXIX belying the matter, have made out the case for con- gratulation in terms much more gratifying than these? But we may reasonably doubt whether a strain like this, expressed in a confident tone of superior wisdom, but so palpably betraying, with inadvertent honesty, the sordid and disconsolate character and adjuncts of the vaunted privilege, would be listened to with com- placency, during the depressed mood of the scorner of the religious book, religious persons, and religion itself. We can imagine him saying, Pray, suspend your song of triumph and disdain: it has to me a raven sound. Are we, then, in the very elation of our pride, in plain fact thus prostrate on the earth? Must we confess, that we hold our advantage of reason disabused, of stronger and freer intelligence, at the cost of admitting so humiliating an estimate of our being and destiny ? Really, we are in danger of giving these people that we despise, occasion to indulge contempt or pity in their turn. I could al- most wish that I were under the same delusion. It would have contributed little to recover hira from this recoil of feeling, if, just about the same time, an intelligent religious man had fallen into his company, had happened to learn in what manner the serious book and its subject had been disposed of, and had thrown in a few of his suggestions, to re- inspirit the shrinking arrogance of irreligion. — I am rather sorry, (we may suppose him to say,) that a book like that, written with the most simple and bene- volent desire to do good, by a man who had deeply studied his subject, should have been the object of a contempt which I should have thought full as justly bestowed on some of those productions, of frivolous XXX quality, or dishonest intention, which I believe are the objects of your favour. However, a work which liBs engaged the most serious attention, and power- fully operated on the character, of multitudes, and will do so of multitudes more, can afford to incur your passing glance and expressions of disdain. And the subject of the book, religion, can afford it too— that religion, which has sustained the severest ex- amination, and secured the conviction, and animated the virtues in life, and hopes in death, of many of the strongest, noblest minds, who have bequeathed to its glory all that was illustrious in humanity. So honoured, what can it lose, think you, of its dignity and venerableness, by the refusal of your homage? It can, I repeat, afford that you should be its re- jecters and contemners, and should lend all the credit of wisdom and virtues such as yours, to the cause which is so fierce to explode it. With perfect impu- nity to its honours, religion can have you going about proclaiming, that you have received a light by which it is exposed as a delusion and imposture, — a light of the same kind, (if so grave a topic would allow so ludicrous an allusion,) as that which was ob- tained where the satirist reports to have seen the wise men at work to extract sunbeams from cu- cumbers. But when, in this self-assurance of recti- fied understanding, you are indulging your contempt of religion, does the thought never strike you, what a very curious chance it was that this brighter illu- mination, under which the old imposture vanishes, should fall exactly on you P For, was your mind of an order, or in a disposition, the most likely to attract the latent element of truth, to combine with it, and XXXI disperse the fog? Was yours the spirit to contem- plate, with comprehensive survey, in pure serenity of temper, the theory of rehgion ? If from moral causes you needed and wished that religion should not be true, was that the security for impartial in- quiry, and undcceptive conclusions ? If you experi- enced what you thought injustice (or I will suppose it really such) from persons of religious profession, and your resentment against them grew into re-action against religion itself, was that the proper mood for examining its authority ? If you had yourself made pretensions to piety, but, forfeiting your Christian character by misconduct, were censured or disowned by a religious community with which you had been connected, and then called on infidelity to assist your revenge, was that a benign conjunction under which to commence your new intellectual enterprise ? And if, to decide your hesitation, expel your yet lingering fears, and promote your progress, you betook your- self to the companionship, through the attraction of their irreligion, of men whom you knew to be un- principled and profligate, aiul perhaps ignorant too, was that the school in which you can feel pride to have been learners? Such things recollected, how- ever, may be quite compatible with self-complacency, in persons of your principles ; but you may believe that religion will suffer no default of its honours, by jiot having such as you for adherents. I allow that you have your advantages in its re- jection. Indeed, why should I deny this very thing to be one — that you can think of such a mode of de- liverance from it, and not be stifled with shame? You have the still greater privilege of being set loose XXXii from the constraint of many obligations and prohibi- tions. You are a ** chartered (5^//^ chartered) Hber- tine," and can give yourselF freely away to pleasures, amusements, or ambition. And you boast that you have the high advantage of being intent on realities^ while the captives of religion, you «ay, dragged or threatened off from a thousand attractive objects and opportunities, are consuming their spirits and life on mere ideas^ on the imaginations of some intangible, unseen, and reversionary good. But suspend, for a moment, your boast about this reality of the materials of your happiness. Say whether it be not a fact, ihdit you are in no other possession of your favourite objects, than merely in idea, during the far greater proportion of your time. Your thinking of them, wishing for them, imagining how delightful would be the possession of them ; contriving how to attain them, feeling how wretched and impatient you are in not having them yet, fretting at the obstacles, raging at your disappointments: again eagerly anti- cipating them, as now nearly within your reach; being mortified at a new delay, thrown in this chilling mo- ment on the reflection what the pursuit has already cost you, and what it may cost you still ; alarmed, perhaps, at what the very success may cost you, in its possible or certain consequences — what kind of reality is ail this? Nearly the same as that of a fair garden of fruit to a man looking at it, or attempt- ing it across a treacherous moat, a steep slippery bank, and an almost impenetrable fence of thorns. Is this the reality which will bear you out in your exultation over those who are wasting, you say, their energy on objects which exist to them only in idea? XXXlll But you do sometimes obtain your objects, and can say you now possess the thing itself; which the devotees to religion, you say, never can, since that which they are peculiarly to aspire after, is confess- edly something not belonging to this world. And you account it the special advantage which you have over them, that it is through the rejection of the truth and authority of religion that you are em- powered to make a larger appropriation of what the real world contains and oflPers. Had I remained servile to that domination, you will exclaim, what an interdict should I have met, n^hichever way I turned ! This object I must not have put forth my hand to- ward at ail ; this other I must beware of following beyond a certain length. If, thus enclosed round with a restriction from so many desirable things, I could soar aloft, that were well. 1 had leave to mount up through the sky, to walk ideally in a para- dise, holding converse with angels, and fixing, by anticipation, on a mansion in New Jerusalem. But I was for no such ethereal altitudes, and impalpable superfine felicities. I wanted the substantial good of this earth ; wanted some things of a kind, others in a measure, and many on terms, which religion forbade. I have disowned the usurped authority, have burst through the restricting circle; and now, see me here in possession or command of things which need no faith to give them substance, and which are not the less agreeable for being a little seasoned with what your spiritual people call sin. But these realities, when actually possessed, do they never let in upon you a mortifying conviction, that you have been nevertheless the dupe of illusion ? b3 XXXIV As a purveyor to your senses, or as a gay spirit, or as a pertinacious aspirer to some pitch of pre-emi- nence above your fellow-mortals in wealth, or display, or power, you may, in some instance and measure, have succeeded in converting the mere images into the very substance: exulting, I may suppose, to think how much you owed in this achievement to your emancipation from all religious belief; but recollect, how long did the possession preclude all painful sense of deficiency ? Did no invading dissatisfaction turn your mind to bitterness of reflection on the previous enchantment of imagination, which had so long prompted you on with assurances of complete delight? Might you never have been overheard to murmur, " What inanity in all these things !" and to curse your destiny, as secretly but an accomplice of reli- gion, to punish and plague you for its rejection ? Thus, then, if you bring to account the entire quantity of the busy occupation of your faculties about that which you pursue as your supreme good, and observe that the proportion of perhaps nineteen parts in twenty of all this is not the interest of actual possession, and then make the deduction for the feel- ings of disappointment and 'chagrin incident to the possession obtained, (and which throw you back again into reflection and imagination ; that is, into mere ideas, and those of a most irksome kind,) it will ap- pear that you have an extremely narrow ground for your boast of being a man for the realities of good, in contrast with the believer in religion, who, you say, subsists on mere images, gleams, and shadows. Would your experience thus far warrant you to compute, that all the moments of full satisfaction XXXV added together would amount to as mu'ch as one year in a long life ? A splendid triumph, for a man who is blessing his superior reason and good fortune, that he is not cheated out of what is real and substantial, to waste his being on the phantasms of Christian faith ! So much it is that you can gain by availing yourself, to the utmost extent that you dare, under the limitations imposed by the constitution of nature and society, of the license conferred by your infi- delity. And so high is your advantage over those who, while indulging the hope of an immortal hap- piness, can make more th^m you can of this world itself, under the sanction or Christian principles in their selection and pursuit. But, while forced to admit so humiliating a re- presentation, you will, perhaps, in the re-action of pride, say, that your being in possession of truths is itself alone a noble eminence that you have attained above the subjects of an imposture, the deluded be- lievers in a revelation. Your spirit has risen up in its strength, and defied the antiquated superstition to lay you under its spell ; it has gone forth in its might, and exterminated from your field of view the crowd of spectres and chimeras. But you must allow me to doubt, whether you really feel in this matter all the confident assurance which you pretend. I suspect there are times when you dare not look out over that field, for fear of seeing the portentous shapes there again; and even that they sometimes come close to present a ghastly visage to you through the very windows of your strong hold. I have ob- served in men of your class, that they often appear to regard the arrayed evidences of revealed religion. XXXVl not with the simple aversion which may be felt for error and deception, but with that kind of repugnance which betrays a recognition of adverse power. Say what penance you would not rather undergo, or of which of your most favourite pleasures (even of those in which you verify your privilege of exemption from the authority of religion) you would not rather deny yourself, for a considerable time, than be obliged to study dehberately, in sober retirement, a few of the works most distinguished for strength of argument in defence of Christianity; though this, it might be presumed, should be a ^ir expedient for confirming your satisfaction ? I know that some of your class, (and perhaps your conscience testifies as to one,) have no resource for escaping from their disquietude, but in diverting their attention completely from the sub- ject, by throwing themselves into the whirl of amuse- ment, into business, conviviality, or intemperance. But it is not the hero's part to affect to be occupied with necessary employments, or to hide himself in a throng of masks and revellers, when he descries the antagonist approaching to challenge him. But it may happen, that the subject, in its menac- ing aspect, will present itself to you under circum- stances which preclude this escape. And you can- not be Unapprized what a striking difference, in spirit and deportment, we have sometimes had an occasion of observing, between one of your tribe, and a man whose moral strength was in the belief and power of revealed religion, when overtaken by some calamity, or attacked by a dangerous distemper. Nor can you have failed to hear of examples, in which that difference has become quite prodigious, when the XXXVil parties have sensibly approached their last hour. You cannot have forgotten instances among those now lost to your fraternity, of some whose closing life presented a direful scene ; who could maintain no longer either their disbelief or their courage ; who poured forth execrations on their principles, and on those from vvhom they had learned them ; called out on pious relatives, absent, or even dead ; implored the intercession of Christian friends; as if, ridiculed so often before for their faith, they were now be- lieved to have power to propitiate insulted heaven; adjured and dismayed their associates in irreligion, if any of them had friendship or hardihood enough to stay by them, in impotence to console them ; were agonized with horror indescribable, and expired, as it were, in an explosion of the last feeble life, by the energy of despair. What security can you have, that yours shall not be such an exit ? For some that have ended so, were exceeded by none in the previous ostentation of confidence in both their prin- ciples and their bravery. It would betray a con- temptibly reckless temper of mind, if you can answer, in a tone of indifference, that if such is to be the event, it will only be the addition of one hideous circumstance more, to the sufferings naturally incident to death ; the concurrence of a disorder of the mind, with that which may be destroying the body ; the ultimate working out, perhaps, of a little superstition, which may have lain latent from the infection of early false instruction. Allow the case to be put so, look- ing no further; and even then, if you were a thought- ful man, and apt, as comports with that character, to look forward, the anticipation of so frightful a scene XXXVlll as possible, would be enough to quench many a lively sparkle, to imbitter many an unhallowed gratification, to repress many an irreligious daring, to dispirit many an ambitious project, to mortify many a proud senti- ment. But there is another thing, not to be over- looked, which may warn you to take care how you dispose of the matter so lightly. In most of these fearful death-scenes of infidelity, the unhappy mortal has been racked to a confession, that he had never dealt honestly with the subject, and with his soul ; that he had never fairly examined the question ; that he had not been sincerely intent on knowing the truth ; that he had repelled intrusive lights, and sup- pressed remonstrant emotions; that he had suffered his pride, his vanity, or his sensuality, to determine his rejection of the authority of revelation. So that conviction rushed upon them, not in the simple char- acter of truth, but also in that of vengeance. It had retreated before their defiance of both its more imperative and more gentle attempts during their progress, only to await them, in retributive power, at the end. See that you do not forget that circum- stance of their experience, when you are disposed to make so light of the acknowledged possibility that your end may be like theirs. But I am unwilling, while looking on your coun- tenance, to foresee you as exhibiting, one day, an- other such spectacle; and will limit my imagination to represent you as in a situation less appalling, but very mournful. Let it be supposed that you live on, constant to your present system, and considerably successful in your endeavour to make the best of the world on your own plan, till you attain an advanced XXXIX age, a period when accumulating signs, and even the mere reckoning of time, must warn you, that you have nearly had your day. Let it be supposed, that you then happen to be in company with a man of equal age, who has been governed from his youth by a firm and cordial faith in that which you have rejected. Imagine that you hear him, induced, per- haps, by the hope of conveying an influence to the minds of some youthful friends, adverting briefly and unostentatiously to his past life, as a religious course ; recalling what he regards as the most sensible com- mencement of the decisive operation of religion on his mind, when the conviction of its truth and ne- cessity became his reigning principle; then, noting some of the effects which have evinced, in their suc- cession, the progress of its eflicacy, both in the power of its dominion, and in the creation of happiness; and, finally, expressing with emphasis his delight and gra- titude, that now, in the cold evening shade of life, this heavenly light shines still brighter, as inter- mingling with those rays which are coming fast from a nobler state of existence, confidently expected to be attained through death. Imagine yourself silently hearing all this, expressed in perfect collectedness of mind, in language clear oi' all wildness and inflation, and observing the aspect of the speaker, uniformly dignified, whether grave or animated ; and imagine, too, your own feelings at being placed in such a com- parison. Can you conceive it possible for you to maintain the sense of a privileged condition, or not to sink in the profoundest mortification ? What ! will you not be compelled to think of a system, which throws an aggravation of gloom on a period which xl the order of nature deprives of pleasures, and besets with multiplying grievances, thus brought in contrast with that other system, which warms, and invigorates, and enriches, the close of a worn-out being, with something far better than all the vivacity and pros- pects of youth ? What will you think of a system, which forbids thoughtfulness to old age, and throws it, for relief, under the pressure of its infirmities, upon the resources of business, which it has no longer strength to transact, or of amusements incongruous with the character of that season, and in which the antiquated performer appears like a man dancing and jesting to the place of execution? You shrink at the idea of being placed in such a contrast. I do not say to you. Embrace, then, without delay, the faith which would place you, in that last stage, on the superior ground ; — for you will tell me, that your belief is not in your own power; meaning when you say so, (is not this the plain truth ?) that you have no disposition to a serious, diligent, and really impartial re-examination of the subject : but, at least, I am authorised to advise you to be henceforth a little reserved in your ridicule of books describing the rise and progress of rehgion in the soul. If tempted at any time to its unrestrained indulgence, just look forward to the predicament in which you may one day feel that you stand, in comparison with a man who has experienced that process, (whether the operating cause be a beguilement or a truth,) and is joyfully awaiting its consummation. And I venture to predict to you, that, in such a case, your utmost eflPorts to re-assure yourself that the man so contrasted with you is but a deluded fool, will do xli little to disperse the gloom settling and thickening on your spirit. But now let us turn our thoughts to conjecture the kind of reception which this good book may have found, with persons of several classes greatly differ- ent from the example we have been supposing. — We may assume as a certainty, that it has caught the notice of very many persons indisposed to religion, but entertaining no doubt that we have a revelation to declare its nature, and to command our solemn at- tention to it. The circumstance did actually happen, that the words of the title were taken in by the eyes, and that some thoughts were involuntarily raised in the mind. Persons now living may recollect this having occurred to them, as an incident which did not please them. We can imagine it to have hap- pened to more than a few gay young persons, of minds not uncultivated, not left entirely uninstructed respecting the highest concern of their existence, but quite averse to think of so serious a subject. A pious relative might .have placed the book, by a deli- cate device, in the way to seize the eye; or it might be taken up when casually lying on the table of an acquaintance. And we are too sure we are but pic- turing an example of many that there have been of the same kind, when we imagine we see the young person hastily laying down the volume, with a look of disappointment and distaste, expressive of the sentiment, That is no book for me. To glance over the title-page, was quite disgust enough for so frivo- lous a spirit to endure. In another instance, we seem to see the young person inspecting the book for a xlii few moments, in an unfixed, heedless manner, plainly indicating it would soon be closed ; presently throwing it aside, as worth no further attention ; then fortu- nately detecting, where it had slidden in among bet- ter books, some very silly romance ; seizing it as a discovered treasure, and unable to lay it down till a whole volume was run through. Another case may be conceived, in which our book, of the Rise and Progress of Religion, has chanced to be within sight in the interval of animated, restless expectation of meeting some gay associates, or of going to some amusement; when it detained the youthful thought no longer than to suggest a pleasurable idea of the difference, between the dull and funereal business of* religion, and such exhilaration as that in prospect. It might be no excess of fancy to suppose another case : that this same book obtruded itself on the sight of a young person in an hour of disgust and fallen spirits, after suffering some disappointment and morti- fication amidst those gay delights which had been so exultingly anticipated ; and that it excited no better feeling than this, Let me not have another odious thing just now to plague me ; I am vexed and out of patience enough. For one more instance : a young person of this light spirit might be on terms of ac- quaintance with one of a more thoughtful character, and might happen to find the latter reading, or appa- rently having just read the book in question ; and might betray some marks of sincere wonder at so strange a taste; internally saying, If /were ever to have been caught employed with such a book, I would have hastily put it out of sight, at the entrance of a pleasant visitor. — No one will doubt, that there xliii may have been facts answering to these conjectural descriptions; and we might, with equal probability, diversify the representation into many other particular forms. Where and what are the persons now, who were the reality of what we are thus supposing? But will there not be yet many more human beings to be added to the account of such examples ? It may be, that, in some of these instances, the young person did not escape receiving some hints of admonition from a friend, whose benevolent vigilance had perceived this refusal to converse an hour, or a moment, with a book soliciting attention to the most important subject. Whatever might actually be the strain of such an admonition, we may think that friend — not laying any stress on the bare circum- stance of dislike to this particular book, but taking occasion from it, as indicating aversion to religion itself — would have deserved to be listened to in using such terms as the following : — Will you be persuaded, is it possible to induce you, to make a short effort with your mind, to constrain it to serious reflection ? Would you have me, or not, to regard you as capable of thinking and judging, as in posses- sion of a share of good sense, and as admitting that there really may be a just call for its exercise, even at your age? You are not willing to be accounted the reverse of this ? Well then, prove that you can think, and that you can perceive when there is a subject before you, which has peculiar claims that you should think. And is there any thing which can urge a more peremptory claim than the questions, What manner of being it is that you possess, to what end you possess it, and how it should be occupied, in order xliv to the attainment of that end ? Is your own nature a thing of such little account with you, that you are quite satisfied with the mere fact of its being an ex- istence; and that you have no doubt whether you may give away all its faculties, without care or ac- countableness, to whatever pleases them, and invites them into action? Does every consciousness you feel of what there is in that nature, agree to your living as a gay bird of the spring; as a creature made for the play and revel of mere life and sensation; or, at most, fitted for some little schemes of transient interest, confined to a span of existence, and Hable to be broken up and given to the winds at any hour? Is this all you find in the endowments of your nature? Is this the amount of its capabilities and dignity? No, you would say; you believe that you possess, for you have been taught that all of us do, a spirit, of noble quality, and important destination. Do you indeed believe any such thing? What, while I see the whole vigour of your being, animal and mental, at some times dissipated in levity, spirited off in effu- sions of mirth; or, at other times, consumed in ear- nest protracted assiduity to accomplish some contri- vance for personal display, some little feat of compe- tition, or some scheme (a grand one, you think) of creating for yourself a happiness for a few years, from materials which every day must diminish, and any day may annihilate ? Is it impossible to you, or do you not think it worth while, to reflect whether so living be consistent with so believing? Does it never strike you as a thing to wonder at, that there can be a creature so strangely formed as to admit these things to coalesce, and that you happen to be xlv that creature ? Or do you escape all sense of incon- sistency and shame, through mere thoughtlessness, which prevents your being reminded of that truth which you say you believe ? Mere thoughtlessness ! and how is that possible ? How is it possible to believe what you affirm that you do, and not often feel a solemn influence com- ing over your mind, and banishing, for at least a little while, all trifling moods and interests ? As- sured that you are, as to the most essential property of your nature, a spiritual and immortal being, think, account to yourself, how it can be, that such a con- viction, fixed, and abiding within you, should abide there alone, disconnected from all the activity of your ideas and feelings, having, so to speak, nothing to do there; while, in all reason, it ought to be com- bined there with many most important ideas with which it has an inseparable relation, and which it ought to keep there in active force. For, consider what you are admitting, when you say you believe you are such a being. You are ad- mitting that you stand in a solemn relation to the Almighty; that your present state of existence is but a brief introduction to another; that your body is but a frame accommodated to retain your superior and more essential being for a short period in this v*uild; that its interests, therefore, and all interests which respect this world exclusively, are infinitely insignificant in comparison with those of the spirit; that you are every moment in progress toward the experience of a happiness or misery of incalculable magnitude ; and that this short and uncertain life is the season for maturing the dispositions and habits xlvi to a state which will consign you to the one or the other, if the declarations of God be true. Can you attempt to deny, or pretend to doubt, that all this is included in the fact of your possessing a rational spirit, destined to endless existence, and most justly required to obey the commands of your Creator? But if this be true, you cannot exercise your judg- ment, and listen to your conscience, for one hour, without plainly seeing what is your highest interest, and most imperious duty. Nothing in the world, nothing in all truth, can press upon you with mightier evidence, than that your grand business in life, is the care of the soul, that shall live for ever. Confess to your reason and conscience that the case is so, and that any assertion to the contrary would instantly strike you as false and foolish. You do confess it. But what, then, should be thought of you, what should you think of yourself, if you will then act as if the very contrary were the truth? Suppose that (in such a spontaneous escape of thoughts in words, as sometimes happens to a per- son musing in the security of solitude,) the prevail- ing disposition of your mind were to utter itself in- voluntarily and audibly, and in expressions like these: — " My supreme concern is as clear to my view as the sun; there is no denying it, there is no question about it; it is, to apply myself earnestly to secure the welfare, here and hereafter, of my immortal spirit: but I feel no such care; I dislike and evade all admonitions which would enforce it on me; I yield myself to this disposition without restraint, or re- morse, or fear, for the present, and shall do so — I do not know, nor much care, how long." Suppos- xlvii ing this uttered in an almost unconscious passing of your mind into your voice, would you not be awaked and startled into recollection at sounds of such im- port, and be almost surprised into the question — "Who was saying that? Was it 1? How strangely it would have sounded, if any one had been within hearing!" If any one had been within hearing! And could you forget that there is One who per- fectly knows that internal disposition, of which ex- pressions like these might be the genuine utter- ance? While you are intent on being happy, surely it should be one thing regarded as indispensable to your being truly so, that you can approve yourself; that, whatever imperfections there are for you to con- demn and regret, you yet can feel a deliberate com- placency, a complacency of reflection and conscience, in the prevailing habit and purpose of your mind. What is it worth, that a variety of outward things should please you, if you are haunted with a sense that your own internal condition, the condition of your very self, is something to grieve you? Now, I wish it were possible to induce you to turn upon yourself one resolute, patient, impartial inspection. Look, with the intentness wuh which you would traze on an emblematical picture, in whose signs you could believe your destiny to be figured out, look on the being, formed for an endless iuturity, but en- grossed by the interests of a day; appointed after a short term, to pass into another world, but repelling all thoughts and monitions of it; capable of an ele- vated and perpetual fehcity, but sunk and expended in transient pleasures, and precarious hopes; invited xlviii to communion with the Father of Spirits, but turn- ing away, with indifFerence or aversion, to seek all that it wants, for affection and assistance, in the in- tercourse of associates who are equally careless of his favour; and summoned to adopt a wise and con- stant discipline, to make sure of its true welfare, in time and eternity, but surrendering the formation of its character, and the direction of its course, to what- ever may happen to obtain the ascendency, to casual impressions, ill chosen friends, or the prevailing spirit and habits of the world. Behold this spectacle as being yourself, your very self. Do you turn from the sight and say you do not like to look at it? What, then, you confess that, amidst all the youth- ful vivacity in which you spring to catch the passing pleasures, and call them happiness, one primary re- quisite to true happiness is wanting ! You cannot be happy, while you dare not be sometimes still, and abstracted from the stir, lest you should hear a complaining and accusing voice from within, telling you there is something fatally wrong there. You are reluctant to give any attention to reli- gion, and to look into a book which describes its Rise and Progress in the Soul. Why should you, you think, have the brightness of your early season overcast with the gloom of such a subject ? — pre- ferring, in effect, that this shade, if it must come some time, should wait to bring additional darkness over a period when the sunshine of youth will be past, and life be declining into that season which you never think of but as of itself a dreary one. How cruel the gay youth can resolve to be to the aged person that he expects to become ! I will repel, he xl IX practically says, all invasion of a grave subject from this my season of animation and delight, at the cost of having it to come, as a melancholy cloud, over a time when I shall, by the course of nature, have out- lived the best part of my life. So that my season of energy and enjoyment be kept clear, never mind what I may be accumulating to bring sadness on my spirit in that stage where I shall need every conso- lation. Surely the consciousness of acting on such a plan, should itself be enough to damp the gayest of your vivacities. You are unwilling to yield to the claims of reli- gion. But will you not take the trouble to consider what religion is, and in what manner it concerns you ! It is not a thing which your Creator imposes on you by a mere arbitrary appointment ; as if he would exact, simply in assertion of his supremacy, and in requirement of homage from his creature, something which is in itself foreign to the necessities of your nature. By its intrinsic quality it so cor- responds to your nature, that the possession of it is vital, and its rejection mortal, to your felicity, even independently of its being made obligatory by the positive injunction of the Almighty. From the spiritual principle of your soul, there is an absolute necessity that it be raised into complacent communi- cation with its Divine Original; it is constituted to need this communication, now and for ever; and if it be not so exalted, it is degraded and prostrated to objects which cannot, by their very nature, adequately meet, and fill, and bless its faculties: to be elevated to this communication is religion. You do not, I presume, wish that your spirit were a being destined C 15 1 to final extinction a few years hence; but would you have it be immortal, and yet estranged from what must naturally concern it /25 immortal? If really immortal, it is under a plain necessity of its nature to give a devoted regard to its interests of hereafter, of eternity : to do so is religion. Again, your soul is tainted with corruption ; it is infected with sin ; you are sometimes conscious that it is ; and this is a malady which may cling to it, and inhere in it, after all bodily diseases have ceased in death. But then there is the plainest necessity that some grand opera- tion be effected in it to remove this fatal disorder; that its condition be renovated and purified; that the action of its powers be determined to the right ends; that its guilt be pardoned; that, in one word, it be redeemed : now this great process in the soul is religion. Thus you may see that there can be no grosser misapprehension than that which has some- times prompted the impious wish, that God had not vmde religion necessary by enjoining it; for that, but for this extrinsic necessity, this necessity of mere obligation to his authority, religion might have been neglected, and the neglecter have fared never the worse. But you plead that, whatever may be your con- viction, and ought to be your feeling, you cannot help regarding religion as an austere and gloomy concern ; that you have at times wished the case were otherwise; but so it is, that the subject still presents the same repulsive aspect, whenever it comes by unpleasant surprise, or in the returns of public or private religious instruction, on your attention. You will take every precaution to avoid being left li alone with a person, however estimable and kind, from whom you are apprehensive of receiving any admonition respecting it. Perhaps even the sight of a book, familiarly known to be (as this of the Rise and Progress of Religion) an earnest pointed incul- cation of it, is like glancing at the picture of a skeleton. The subject might become quite a griev- ance of your life, — even this subject, which repre- sents to you how to be happy for ever ! — did not your health, your elastic spirits, your companions, your diversions, defend you so well against its fre- quent or prolonged annoyance. But sometimes, perhaps, an interval does occur, when it visits you in such a character of authority, that your resistance fails for a short time, you are taken at an advantage, and compelled to hear something of its declarations, claims, and remonstrances. And then you murmur, and say, A cruel alternative ! to yield such submis- sion, or incur such consequences. Is it not hard that I should be required to surrender all the de- lights which are the privilege of my age, to repress my vivacity, to forsake my gay society, abandon my amusements, to inflict self-denial on my inclinations at every turn, to deplore all that I am, and all that I have been; to force my attention and affections away from this interesting world around me, toward another and unseen world of which I know nothing; to toil through severe and never-ceasing exercises, called discipline ; to exhaust ray spirits in solemn reflection ; to live in terror lest every thing I do or enjoy should be sin ; to renounce, and put myself in conflict with, the prevailing habits of society; to be marked as an over-righteous or melancholy mortal ; c 2 lii to look through a darkened medium at every thing in life ; and to go through the world thinking of every step as a progress toward the grave? Now, even were it admitted that all this is a true representation of religion, that all this is its require- ment, the friend who is urging it upon you might still maintain his argument. The question, he would say, what cost we should be willing to bear in a pro- cess, is to be determined, if wisdom be the judge, by an estimate of the result. The greatest tempo- rary evil would be a mild condition of the attainment of an eternal good. If religion actually did require all this, but in return assured you of being safe and happy for ever, what would your high endowment of reason be worth, in practical application, if you would not resolve on the endurance of such an introduction, rather than lose such a sequel? But you well know that such a representation, unqualified, is no just account of the demands of religion. And beware of allowing yourself in the disingenuousnesss of exaggerating the hardship, in order to extenuate to your conscience, or to vindi- cate against your friendly admonisher, your neglect of the duty. At the same time it is true, and must be unequi- vocally avowed, that religion, effectually prosecuted, does involve great labours, a discipline often severe, and therefore many painful experiences. It must include much that is mortifying to natural inclina- tions. How should it be otherwise with a being of a corrupt nature, who is to be trained and prepared, and that while under the incessant influences of a corrupt world, for a final state of holiness and feli- liii city ? If the natural condition of the mind be uncon- genial with what is divine and heavenly, its afFections unattempered to live and delight in that element which is the vitality of the happiness of the beings whom, alone and exclusively, the revelation from God, and even your own reason, authorize you to conceive of as happy in a superior state, — if there be this alienation and unfitness, (and what is the aversion to religion but the proof of it? or rather, it is the thing itself,) — if the case be so, then the soul is in a condition so dreadfully wrong, that it is not strange the agency for transforming it should inflict pain in the salutary process. That it should work with some expedients of bitterness, keenness, and fire, is quite in analogy with the operations neces- sary for subduing the extreme maladies of an inferior order. Perhaps you will say, that, as the Divine Power, in the time and in the person of our Lord, annihilated the worst diseases of the body by a single act, making the subject perfectly well, in an instant, and without pain, so the Almighty could instan- taneously set the moral nature right, causing the spirit to rise up suddenly in the delightful conscious- ness, that not a particle of evil remains, blessed with a triumph over the disastrous fall, and assuming a ground still higher than that which our first progeni- tor lost. No doubt he could; but since he has not willed such an economy, the question comes to you, whether you can deliberately judge it better to carry forward a corrupt nature, uncorrected, untransformed, unreclaimed to God, into the future state where it must be miserable, than to undergo whatever severity is indispensable in the process of the religion which liv would prepare you for a happy eternity. Reflect, that you are every day practically answering the question. Can it be that you are answering it in the affirmative ? Do I really see before me the rational being who in effect avows, — I cannot, will not submit to such a discipline, though, in refusing it and resist- ing it, I renounce an infinite and eternal good, and consign myself to perdition ? Religion, it is acknowledged, brings its pains; just because it comes from heaven to maintain a deadly conflict in the soul, with principles and dispositions which are rebellious against heaven, and destructive to the soul itself. Nothing can be more thought- less or unknown than the strain in which some have indulged in the recommendation of it, as if it were all facility and enjoyment. You have possibly heard or read graceful periods of descant on the subject, re- presenting to young people especially, that their un- sophisticated principles, their lively perception of the good and the fair, their generous sentiments, their uncontaminated affections, are so much in unison with the spirit of piety, that it is a matter of the ut- most ease for them, for such as you, to enter on the happiness of the religious life. Some little obstruc- tion surmounted, one light spring made, and you regain the walks of Eden I Did you believe it ? If you did, what unaccountable caprice, what pure wan- tonness of perversity, could it be that withheld you? Or, if you were induced to make some short attempt in the way of experiment, did you not wonder how it should happen, by a peculiar untowardness in your case, that these youthful qualities, so congenial with piety, and so easy to be resolved into it, did never- Iv theless prove obstinately repugnant to the union ? Did you not think, Why, then, this aversion to read the Bible, or to retire for serious meditation and devotional exercise, or to any act of duty to be done simply in obedience to God? But the decla- mation which you had heard was idle rhetoric, or wretched ignorance. It must be acknowledged also, that much worthier teachers have, from a better cause, sometimes com- mitted an error in underrating, or keeping nearly out of view, the austerer characteristics of religion, when inculcating it on youth. In their benevolent zeal to persuade, they were desirous of presenting a picture wholly attractive. And perhaps religion was become so decidedly their own chief happiness, that they could, for the time, forget the pains of the transformation through which it had become so. They have therefore made a representation, illumi- nated nearly all over with delightful images. It is better that you should see the whole truth, and clearly understand that the agent which, in a capacity like that of a tutelary spirit, takes in charge a per- verted, sinful, tempted being, to be humbled and re- claimed, taught many mortifying lessons, disciplined through a series of many corrections, reproved, re- strained, and incited, and thus conducted onward, in advancing preparation for the happiness of another world, must be the inflicter of many pains during the progress of this beneficent guardianship. And it is not, as your aversion and murmurs would imply, the fault of religion that the case is so, but of that de- praved nature which religion is designed and indis- pensable to redeem. Ivi So mucli for the darker side. But now, on the other hand, you can surely conceive, as compatible with all this, a great preponderance of happiness in this life. And therefore you ought to take it on your conscience as a reproach for criminal want of thought, or of honesty, that you will admit no other notion of religion than that of a gloomy melancholy thing. When you are turning away from it, as a grim and ghostly object, sent to encounter you for no more friendly purpose than to obstruct you, with threatening aspect, at every avenue to the scenes of delight, there ought to arise within your mind a sterner image, to condemn you for wilfully misjudg- ing its character, and the service it has to offer you. For you can comprehend that there is attainable, through the efficacy of religion, something far. better than all you can hope ever to enjoy under the un- hallowed advantage of rejecting it. Try faithfully whether you cannot understand, that it would be a great felicity to feel that your spirit is changing into conformity to a nobler model, growing into the only right constitution and image to be retained for ever; to feel that the evil which infests it is shrinking and subdued under a mightier power; to regard the best and greatest Bein>g as no longer an appalling object, thought of with reluctance, and a wish that you could be for ever out of his sight and reach; but now with emotions of love, and confidence, and hope, with an assurance of his mercy through Jesus Christ, with an experience of real communication with him concerning all your interests, and with a consciousness that you are in activity for a Master who will confer an infi- nite reward. Think whether it would not be happy to Ivii feel habitually a power, maintaining a sacred control over your passions and your will, and preserving the current of your life unmingled with the world's pollu- tions. Imagine yourself animated, at the close of each year or shorter period, with a fervent gratitude to God, in the consideration what sins and follies he has saved you from thus much longer. Can you doubt whether that one emotion would really be worth more, to an accountable being, than all the pleasurable feelings which an irreligious person can have enjoyed during the whole interval ? Place before your mind a scheme of life, in which you shall see yourself committing, to the care and disposal of a beneficent Providence, the course of your life from the beginning, with a constant assur- ance that Sovereign Wisdom and Goodness will watch over all its movements and events, will conduct you through its perplexities and perils, will give you just so much temporal good that more would not be for your welfare, and will constrain all things which you are to pass through to co-operate to your ulti- mate happiness. Think also of enjoying the con- sciousness that you are not throwing the inestimable spring-season of your life away, but expending it so as to enrich every succeeding period, and to ensure a fine setting sun upon the last. Say honestly, whether all this be not something better than any scheme of life which you have indulged your imagina- tion in shaping. Or, if you sometimes surrender yourself to the fascinations of romance and poetry, glowing over bright pictures of felicity in which re- ligion has no place, make the experiment on your mind, in an hour of cooler feeling, whether you dare c3 Iviii pronounce that it would be well to forego this happi- ness of religion, by a preference of that exhibited in these highly coloured fictions, on the supposition that they could, for you, be turned into reality. Yes, if these images could be turned into facts ; but let me hint to you, that the very exhibitors of these de- lectable fabrications out of air would scorn your folly in expecting any such realization. They would tell you, deriding your simplicity, that the shows which enchant you so much are the creation of their genius^ exerted to a much finer purpose than that of repre- senting an actual or even possible order of things ; that they consciously and intentionally abandon the ground on which plain mortality must toil along through ordinary good and evil, to range among imaginary elements, obsequious to their will. Ludi- crous and juvenile indeed, they would say, must be the credulity of any one setting out to find some- where, as a fact, what it requires the utmost of their inventive power but to figure out in fiction. And you may perceive, if you have any sober observation, that no such felicity, wrought out of the mere ma- terials of this world, is actually in the possession of any of its inhabitants — its youthful inhabitants, 1 mean ; for yourselves will readily allow, that those of them who are grown old, and are going to leave it, must have a hopeless task in striving to make it yield them happiness, when it is shaking themselves off; shaking them off who have expended their life in idolizing it, and are clinging to it in the forlorn condition of feeling no hope or attraction toward a better. You do not deserve to know Kow to be happy, lix even in this life, if you will not be persuaded to make an honest eflPort of comparison between any scheme that would promise to make you so independently of religion, and the felicity which would attend a re- ligious course, commencing in youth. Do not think to defend yourself by saying, that the representation how happy a youthful spirit might be in a devotement to religion, is greatly exaggerated. Besides that in theory it is evidently in the nature of that great cause, and in the gracious design and promise of Him from whom it descended, that it should confer advantages surpassing all others, you should be willing to receive testimony as to the fact, from those who have gone effectually into the ex- periment. And you know, that they' whom you verilv believe to have made the most competent trial, are the most decided, though not boastful, in their declarations ; and that the tenor of their deportment proves their sincerity. Observe some of those young persons, (I hope you are not so unfortunate as not to know such,) whom you yourself believe to be most fully under the power of religion ; call them, if you will, its prisoners, its bondmen, its slaves ; some of your gay companions attempt to ridicule them as its fools ; but do you observe whether their piety con- duces to their happiness ? It is true, they are not happy after the manner in which your lighter friends account of happiness ; not happy, if the true signs of that state be a volatile spirit, a continual glitter of mirth, a dissipation of mind and time among trifles, a dread of reflection and solitude, an eager pursuit of amusements ; in short, a prevailing thoughtless- ness, the chief suspensions of which are for the study Ix of matters of appearance and fashion, the servile care of faithfully imitating the habits and notions of a class, or perhaps the acquirement of accomplishments for show. It must be confessed, they have thoughts too grave, the sense of too weighty an interest, a conscience too solicitous, and purposes too high, to permit them any rivalry with the votaries of such felicity. Certainly they feel a dignity in their voca- tion, which denies them the pleasure of being frivo- lous. But you will see them often cheerful, and sometimes very animated. And their animation is of a deeper tone than that of your sportive creatures; it may have less of animal briskness, but there is more soul in it. It is the action and fire of the greater passions, directed to greater objects. Their emotions are more internal and cordial ; they can be cherished and abide within the heart, with a pro- longed, deep, vital glow ; while those which spring in the youthful minds devoid of reflection and reli- gion, seem to give no pleasure but in being thrown oflp in volatile spirits at the surface. Did you think that these disciples of religion must renounce the love of pleasure? Look, then, at their policy for securing it. The most unfortunate calculation for pleasure is to live expressly for it ; they live primarily for duty, and pleasure comes as a certain consequence. If you have but a cold apprehension of the degree of such pleasure, if you can but faintly conceive how it should be poignant, you can at least understand that it must be genuine. And there is in it what may be called a principle of accumulation; it does not van- ish in the enjoyment, but, while passing as a senti- ment, remains as a reflection, and grows into a store Ixi of complacent consciousness, which the mind retains as a possession left by what has been possessed. To have had such pleasure is pleasure, and is so still the more, the more of it is past. Whereas you are aware, if you have been at all observant of the feel- ings betrayed by the youthful children of folly, in the intervals of their delights, (and does nothing in your own experience obtrude the same testimony ?) that those delights, when past, are wholly gone, leaving nothing to go into a calm habitual sense of being happy. The pleasure is a blaze which con- sumes entirely the material on which it is lighted. So that the uncalculating youth, who seized a tran- sient pleasure last week, or yesterday, has no satis- faction from it to-day; but rather, perhaps, feels fretted with a sense of being cheated, and left in an irksome vacancy, from which he has no relief but in recovering his eagerness to pursue another, which is in the same manner to pass entirely away. And ob- serve, this is the description of the unenviable kind of felicity of the less criminal class of the young per- sons destitute of religion; it represents the condition of those who surrender their spirits and life to vain and trifling interests, as distinguished from the grosser evil which we denominate vice. To insist that re- ligion is better than that^ as productive of happiness in this life, would seem but an impertinent pleading in its favour. Now be, for once, a thoughtful and serious being, willing to apprehend the contrast between all this and the state of a young person who feels a profound invariable conviction that he has made the right choice; who finds that his grand purpose will bear Ixii the severest exercise of his judgment, and pleases him the most when he judges the most rigorously; who feels an elation of spirit in vowing an eternal fidehty to his object ; who beholds it undiminished in excellence, if there come a season of gloom over his other interests and prospects, when it proves to be not a thing of mere splendid colours, which vanish in a deepening shade, but of intrinsic lustre, a lumi- nary which shines through, and shines the brighter for, the darkness. Not that this youth makes any pretension to be a stoic philosopher, serenely inde- pendent of the temporal good and evil attending or awaiting his progress into life, with no warm affec- tions to the things in the scene around him, to be painfully mortified when adverse events and influences frustrate his hopes and projects. But his advantage over those of his coevals who have no better than such interests, is, that he has enshrined his best af- fections in that one thing which does not partake of mortality and this world's uncertainty, and therefore but evinces its worthiness the more under the failure of every thing else that can fail. It is, like Him who is its Author and Guardian, " the same yester- day, to-day, and for ever." The pious youth, then, is not abandoned, for his chief enjoyment, to an end- less fluctuation, alternating between delight and dis- gust, eager to seize, and wondering that the posses- sion turns so soon to nothing; all the while neglect- ing, or fearful to reflect, whether the whole plan be not essentially wrong; and thus fulfilling the decree, that " to him that trusteth in vanity, vanity shall be the recompense." Be assured there are young persons who can tes- XIU tify that this is their own experience of the happi- ness of religion, in so considerable a degree as to in- spire an earnest wish to become more completely pos- sessed by its power, from the conviction that then they should be much happier still. And now do not let your mind evade the question, whether they would not be right in the feeling, that they would not, for all the world, be in the condition of those who never think of religion but as the enemy of youthful happiness. Some of them can well re- member when they were themselves in that condition; and they would at any time prefer instant death to the calamity of relapsing into It. No wonder, then, if you perceive them holding extremely light the opinion of those, too many of their own age, who can look on them with a propensity to ridicule, or an affectation of pity. And, tell me, what Ao you think of such judges? I conjecture you may have been under no small in- fluence of the opinions of some rather like them, and would have deemed it a sad misfortune to be dis- countenanced in their community, or excluded from it by their aversion. But at what rate do you really estimate their judgment? If they were to tell you, plainly, that it is needless and unseasonable in youth to consider deeply of the best use of life, with refer- ence to both its continuance and conclusion ; to betjin the expending of your time with a careful estimate of its value ; to feel the importance of your immortal nature, and be solicitous for its welfare ; to seek, as the highest good, the favour of the Almighty ; in short, to begin well, that you may go on well, and end well, — if they were expressly to tell you so, as Ixiv their opinion, what would you think their opinion worth? And should you not be ashamed of what- ever it was in your own mind that could give that opinion any weight with you ? Think how it should be possible for you to feel, for a moment, any thing but contempt or pity for their very understanding. But if they did not tell you so, and could not deny that the contrary is true, what should you account of their conscience, their practical principle? Or, if they never reflected enough to have any opinion at all of the matter, what should you deem of them altogether, as authorities and examples? Perhaps your plea would be, that they are, never- theless, full of vivacity, pleasant and joyous ; and that you must confess this captivates you so, that you have not thought of any such grave affair as that of thus taking account of them. But while you plead so, you know how flimsy is the consistence of this joyous mood of theirs, and by what means you could in- stantly break it up. It is like that thin slime of variegated hues which you sometimes see spread on the surface of polluted water, and which you can dis- perse into fragments by throwing in a twig or stone. When they are at the highest pitch of their spirits, and apparently " shut up in measureless content," you have but just to mention the doom we are all under to die; to name some young person of their acquaintance who lately died, perhaps in great dis- tress and alarm for having been thoughtless like them; or to make an allusion to the final account — " For all these things God will bring thee into judgment;" — you have but to do this, and you will quench, for the time, all their animation, and will Ixv see what awkward efforts they will have to make for its recovery. But, then, when you would plead, Why should you not be allowed to have, free and unalloyed, the pleasure of your youth with and like so many of your age, and be innocently happy, though without religion — does not your conscience smite you at the reflection, that you are coveting the par- ticipation of a happiness which, in its liveliest hour, ten words, or five, would suffice to dash ; and those words no other than such as every young person should often hear, and with a serious thought of their import? There is but one topic more on which I will ex- postulate with you. Perhaps you will say that your neglect of religion is only deferring it; that you are sensible it is a concern which you must attend to some time, and that you are fully resolved to do so in maturer or advanced life. And are you saying this with the images before your mind, of one, and ano- ther, and still another, within the circle of your knowledge, whom you have seen cut off in youth ? Go, stand by their graves and repeat it there ; for there is folly in it, if you could not on those spots repeat it with undisturbed assurance. Say, over those dead forms, now out of sight, but which you can so well, in memory, recall, such as you saw them, alert, and blooming, and smiling, — say there deli- berately, that you know not why you should not be quite at your ease in delaying, to some future distant time, your application to that, without which you believe it to be a fearful thing to pass out of life. It is possible that some one of them, in approaching the last hour, expressed or conveyed to you an ear- Ixvi nest admonition on this subject, conjuring you, in the name of a friend dying in youth, to beware of the guilt and hazard of delay. If so, go to the grave of that one especially, and there pronounce, that an impertinence was uttered at a season when every sentence ought to be the voice of wisdom. Say, " I am wiser in this carelessness of my spirit, than thou wast in the very solemnity of death." Why should you shrink at the idea of doing this ? And if you dare not do it, what verdict are you admitting, by implication, as the just one to be pronounced on your conduct? But perhaps you are ready to reply, that this is pushing the argument beyond its real strength ; for that I seem to be assuming it d^s probable that your life will terminate in youth ; whereas, judging from a collective account of the actual duration of lives, I must know this is not the probability. Just so, no doubt, in reference to themselves, thought they whom you have seen vanish in their early day. And a few examples, or even one, of the treacherousness of the calculation, should suffice to warn you not to hazard any thing of great moment on so menacing an uncertainty. For, in all reason, when an in- finitely important interest is depending, a mere pos- sibility that your allotment may prove to be like theirs, is to be held of far greater weight on the one side, than the alleged probability of the contrary is on the other. The possibility of dying unpre- pared, takes all the value from even the highest probability that there will be prolonged time to pre- pare: plainly because there is no proportion between the fearfulness of such a hazard and the precarious- I Ixvii ness of such a dependence. So that one day of the certain hazard may be safely asserted to be a greater thing against you, than the whole imaginary years, promised you by the probability, ought to be ac- counted of valueybr you. In minor concerns, there may be purposes not improperly formed by a healthy young person, which, though he could effect them now, he may defer upon a calculation of protracted life; because the degree of probability that his life will be protracted, may be equal to any degree of importance or urgency that there is in the design; so that he may be content to refer and trust it to that degree of probability, saying thus — I reckon on accomplishing such a purpose, if my life be prolonged. Or in other words, it is such a design that, in the event of his life not being so prolonged, it will be no serious misfortune not to have accomplished it at all. He may be content to hold, as thus dependent on the contingency of lengthened life, a purpose, for example, of visiting some foreign country, of seeking a more aggreeable locality to reside in, of acquiring some particular branch of not absolutely indispensable knowledge; and so of many other things. The object may be of as much less than the highest necessity to him, as he possesses less than a certainty of long sur- viving his youth. But when you acknowledge a concern to be all-important, and that a failure in it would be immeasurably disastrous, and avow a pur- pose not to fail in it, and yet can deliberately consign this purpose for its accomplishment to a contingent futurity, confidently reckoning on years which you confess may never be yours, as an adequate provision Ixviii for it in reserve, this is, indeed my young friend it is, the worst insanity, because a criminal one. When the concern is so momentous, and any hazard from delay so formidable, this supposed probability of your life being prolonged should not be taken as more worth than it mai) prove to be worth. And what would it prove to be worth, in the event of your being, in this prime of your life, attacked suddenly by an illness threatening to be mortal? Do not trifle with the matter so wretchedly and wickedly, as to say, that, even in that event, perhaps you may have time allowed you for redeeming what you are now wilfully losing, and for securing the safety of the great interest. Perhaps may ! why, this plainly means that you 7nay not. But even if such an undeserved indulgence should be granted, and your perverse will be suddenly transformed to make the utmost use of it, are you not at this moment infallibly certain that it would be a cause of inexpressible grief to you to have made nothing of life, for its grand purpose, till on the point of breath- ing its last ? Besides that, a consideration of what is the merely natural effect of the dread of death, might justly throw a painful uncertainty on the genuineness of the principle which excited your solicitudes and efforts. Besides, too, that you are perfectly aware severe illness is a situation to the last degree unadapted to hard exercises of mind. If you can give your attention for a while to such representations, and still feel that you dare consign your most momentous interest to take the chance, if I may express it so, of your having time for it long after the season of youth, and can look undisturbed, Ixx 111 habits to be formed, whatever communications with heaven to be opened and maintained, and whatever may be lost, and whatever guilt may be incurred, by neglecting all this, still, this year, and many more yet to come, can well be spared from the concern, and surrendered wholly to any other demands. You can account with yourself that it is so much, and so much more, gained to your temporary interests, and lost only to the process for raising you to the eternal ones. At the end of one of these periods you have to reflect, a year of the prime and vigour of my life has passed in a lively career, and is gone to be mine no more; it might have efiected for me, and left me possessing, something of inestimable value toward what I own to be the supremely important business of my life ; but it has left me nothing. When I shall be constrained, at length, to apply myself to that business with all my might, I shall have to re- member this year, with the consciousness that there is not with me one advantage derived from it in aid of my new and difficult undertaking; that, as relative to that concern, it was, by my own determi- nation, flung with all its rich possibilities out of my existence; that I shall have no benefit from it to all eternity. You will have to reflect — I decided that the latter part of my life was all I would give to the great affair; I have accomplished my determination by alienating from it the finest portion of my life; I advance to old age, to death, to judgment, to eternity, under the voluntary loss; and whether, with the im- poverished resources of this late remainder of my time, 1 shall succeed or fail in the grand work, I shall for ever have to remember, that I have not D 15 Ixxiv thought it worth appropriating to it my most valu- able years. So you will have to reflect. But now is the time in which you are actually doing that on which you will have so to reflect : you are deliberately and daily adding something toward your being placed in that predicament. It is pressed upon you as the plainest truth in the world, that you ought to be, through the largest possible extent of your allotted time on earth, in a state adapted to an endless life ; and you resolve, and act on your resolution, 7iot to be in that state during many years of this introduction. You lay a resolute hand on this invaluable portion, to withhold and defend it against the claims of that sovereign interest, practically pronouncing it better, that the commencing and animated stage of your ex- istence should be alienated from all advantageous connection with the grand whole ; that it should not conduce to final good ; that it should be for ever lost as to all that is to follow. Let it be enough, you seem to say, that the endless life to which I am ap- pointed and advancing, shall have, as I do intend, a small part of this introductory one yielded to a con- formity with the solemnity of its character, and ap- plied to secure its happiness ; and if its importance would insist on more, I will resist the encroachment. No authority of its requirement shall wrest from me the liberty, of casting as much as I please of this precious part of my time into an abyss, never to emerge in wealth or pleasure to me in futurity. And whatever that futurity of existence may be the poorer or the worse for so much lost to it, I am content to stand in my lot. My choice is rather to feel how Ixxv much has been lost to my welfare then, than to forego the pleasure of following my inclinations now. And yet, at this very time, at any time, you will acknowledge that the interest of that futurity is the transcendent one, that it is vast and eternal, that it is critically depending, and that it is your own, O what trivial things are the most lofty and solemn words, or their import either, to a mind that will not reflect, or cannot feel ! If, nevertheless, you are still positive in the reso- lution, that you will devote your attention to religion at a more advanced period, I would represent to you that what you are meanwhile losing, is not merely so much time. You deem there is a peculiar value and charm in this prime of your life, so that you rejoice you are not old, nor middle-aged. You do so even independently of any direct thought of being so much further off from the latter end. And what is this so valued peculiarity of youth? Doubtless it is the plenitude of life, the vigour and elasticity of body and mind, the quickness of apprehension, the liveliness of emotion, the energy of impulse to ex- periment and daring. Now, consider under what signal advantage, with respect to the subsequent progress, religion would commence its course in the strength of these animated forces. It would be like taking a steed of fire for some noble enterprise, in- stead of one already tamed with time and labour, or nearly worn down. You would thus be borne on- ward a great length before the vigour of nature begins to remit, and would have acquired a principle of im- pulsion to advance, after that peculiar vigour should have ceased. Your youth, at leaving you, would d2 Ixxvi seem to send its spirit forward with you. The re- ligious career thus commencing, would have all the advantage which a stream, of vast length of course, acquires from rising, and running its first stage, on the slope of a lofty mountain, as compared with that which is put in motion on a tract little better than flat, and creeps heavily on for want of such an impulse from its origin. So important is it to the Progress of religion, that it should have the utmost benefit from its Rise. Again, consider that a person prosecuting, in ad- vanced life, a course which he deeply approves, has a peculiar pleasure in recollecting it as having been also the favourite interest of his youth : a pleasure additional to that of knowing that his early life was not thrown away. For all the pleasing associations of that season adhere and impart their charm to that which continues the approved favourite still. There is the memory of departed friends, the coeval or elder associates and promoters of his youthful piety, his allies in the best cause, whose images, in some soli- tary hour, seem to smile on him from the past, or from heaven. The remembered conscientious efi:brts and vows of self-dedication, augment his satisfaction in that which he still feels deserved them so well. The animated emotions, which he may sometimes regret that he cannot now revive in their vernal fresh- ness, are still his, as having been given to t/iat isofiich is still his, to that which has been continuously his grand object. Thus, what is now ripening into fruit, he can delight to recollect in the beauty and fragrance of its blossom. What a difference between this and the feelings of a man who, becoming religious in later Ixxvii life, finds himself by that very cause dissevered, as it were, from his youth, except for painful, self-re- proachful reflection ; who feels tliat its associations, instead of conveying a genial warmth to him along an uninterrupted train of piety to the present time, are gone away in connection with what he regards as the dishonour and calamity of his existence; like the gardens that once were on a tract which a man has lost from his estate by subsidence into the sea ! But still further : while you are resolving to adopt the right plan sometime, and flattering yourself that thus there will have been, on the whole, and in the conclusion of life's account, a safe preponderance in favour of religion, you are to be admonished that the absence of it, in the earlier part of life, is some- thing more, and worse, than simply so muck lost to that account. It is not only that you are not reli- gious during the time that you shall postpone that concern ; not only that you are rendering so much of life, with respect to that, a mere blank ; you are all the while aggravating the difficulty, and lessening the probability, of your being religious at a later period, or ever. Are you so thoughtless or unknow- ing as to fancy, that a long course of estrangement from this interest, of aversion to it, of resistance against its claims, of suppression of the remonstrances of conscience in its behalf, is to leave you in a kind of neutral state, impartial to admit at length the conviction that now it is high time, and easily con- vertible into a Christian spirit ? Consider that all this time you are forming the habits which, when inveterately established, will either be invincibly upon you through life, or require a mighty wrench to Ixxviii emancipate you. This refusal to think, this revolt- ing from any attempt at self-examination, this avert- ing of your attention from serious books, this de- clining to seek the divine favour and assistance by prayer, this projecting of schemes bearing no regard to that favour, and which are not to need that as- sistance, this eagerness to seize each transitory plea- sure, this preference of companions who would like you the worse if they thought you feared God or cared for your eternal welfare, — these dispositions, prolonged in a succession of your willing acquies- cences in them, will grow into a settled constitution of your soul, which will thus become its own inex- orable tyrant. The habit so forming will draw into it all the affections, the workings of imagination, and the trains of thought ; will so possess itself of them, that in it alone they will live, and move, and have their being. It will have a strong, unremitting pro- pensity to grow entire^ so as to leave nothing unpre- occupied in the mind, for any opposing agent to take hold on, in order to counteract it ; as if it were in- stinctively apprehensive of the effect of protests from conscience, or visitings from the powers of heaven, or intimations from the realm of death ; and therefore intent on forming the sentiments of the soul to such a consistence and coalition, as shall leave none of them free to desert at the voice of these sum- moners. And if you would reflect, you would be sensible that, in effect, you wish the case to be just so. Do not practise any dissimulation with yourself on the subject. In making the resolution that some time (and now, honestly, is not that a time willingly re- Ixxix garded as far ofF?) that some time you will apply your- self to religion, you plainly intend that you will not be religious, that you will be estranged from religion, till then. But, in resolving that it shall not com- mand you, you necessarily must wish that neither shall it disturb you. You wish that, during all the time, no interfering, opposing, alarming principle may abide in your mind ; because you desire to enjoy fully, and in peace, the kind of happiness which you are to exclude religion in order to enjoy. You are wish- ing, then, in eflPect, that your affections and tastes may be entirely in harmony with a system of life de- void of religion, that your judgment may accommodate itself not to condemn your proceeding, and that your conscience should either be beguiled to acquiesce, or repose in a long deep sleep. That is to say, while you are resolving that at some advanced period you will be religious, you are also resolving that, during the long preceding time, you will yield yourself to a process for consolidating those very habits, which will fix your mind in a confirmed antipathy to reli- gion. You are intending to enter at last on conse- crated ground, and yet are surrendering yourself to a power, which will hold you back with the grasp of a fiend when you attempt to approach its border. You presume that the latter stage of your journey shall be an ascent to heaven, and yet, in this earlier one, you deliberately choose a tract in which you can calculate how each downward step goes in aggra- vation of the arduousness of that ascent, if you shall indeed ever attempt it; as if a man who had to reach the summit of a vast mountain, and might do it on one side by a long, gradual, and comparatively gentle Ixxx declivity, should prefer essaying it on that other side, where, descending first to a great depth to reach its base, he must then climb its precipices. Whatever I am now gaining, he might say to himself, in the way of pleasant indulgence in this descent, is so much that I shall find to have been gained against me by the difficulty on yonder steep. It may be easy for you to have credit with your- self in denying, in a light inconsiderate way, that you are actually adopting a plan of such monstrous absurdity. You will say, that you are far from be- ing conscious of any wish to aggravate the future difficulty of applying your mind in good earnest to religion. But this is an evasion, of the thought- lessness or disingenuousness of which you ought to be more than ashamed. You are bound to consider, that, in adopting a plan, you are accountable for every thing which is necessarili/ involved in it. And when your plan is that of spending an indefinite but large portion of your life exempt from religion, you necessarily wish to have the unalloyed benefit of your privilege. (But what terras I am using !) That clear advantage you cannot have, if invaded by convictions, if harassed by conscience, if kept in awe of the invisible Observer, if lightened upon by inti- mations of a judgment to come. You necessarily wish an immunity from all this, in the prosecution of your scheme. But, therefore, by implication, you wish for that which alone can so exempt you ; and that is no other than such a hardened state of mind, such an oblivion habitually, and such a power of defiance occasionally, as will constitute, when fully confirmed^ a most fatal aversion and unadaptedness Ixxxi to that transfer of your thoughts and affections to religion, on which you are presuming as the ultimate resource. And it is probable that, if you had self-observa- tion enough, you might perceive this process toward a confirmed state is going on. Have you no con- sciousness, that the last two or three years of your neglect of religion have rendered your disinclination to it more positive? May there not be a more sen- sible re-action against its remonstrances ? If the earlier feeling was that of mere carelessness about the subject, has it in no degree changed to the 'stronger one of aversion ? Perhaps a serious book, (like this of the Rise and Progress of Religion,) which would at a former time have been lightly put aside, as what no way concerned you, would now be regarded with a pointed sentiment of dislike, almost of hostility, as against an ungracious intruder, come, Jike the ancient prophet to the impious king, " to speak no good of you, but evil." Perhaps you find that you can more promptly set aside any scruples of conscience that rise to obstruct you in the way of your inclinations. And perhaps, as a reward— an advantage, do you deem it ? — of this boldness, you are now seldomer incommoded by such scruples. So that, though your feelings clash more unequivocally with the dictates of religion, when it does arrest your attention, you are stronger to resist, and more expert to elude, and suffer, on the whole, less of the trouble of its interference. This is quite the natural course; but you ought to be aware of its progress. If you absolutely will proceed on this plan, of retaining a purpose in favour d3 Ix XXll of religion, but deferring it to some future distant time, I wish you would be induced to keep yourself apprized of its effect in you, by making now and then an experiment, in the way of test, on the tem- per of your mind. Will you be advised to take occasionally some very serious and cogent book on the subject of personal religion — the one just named, or any other, or some peculiarly solemn part of the Bible; to read it a little while, and watch in what manner your' inmost feeling responds to it? Do this again after an interval, and observe whether the displacency, the repugnance of your heart be less, — whether it be not sensibly more. In an hour when you are left alone, with a perfect freedom to remain for a while in this retirement, recollect the duty of approaching your heavenly Father, with thanks, confessions, and supplications : and observe the movement of your soul under this thought in this opportune hour. Do the same in subsequent opportunities, and see whether the indisposition be not increased rather than diminished. And if the fact be so, what a melancholy phenomenon: a little dependent spirit voluntarily receding from its bene- ficent Creator; directing its progress away from the eternal Source of light, and life, and joy; and that on a vain presumption of being under the comet's law of returning at last to the sun ! In a similar manner, at successive intervals, try the effect, on the temperament of your mind, of some remembered ex- ample of eminent piety in youth, of the recollection of former youthful associates dead, or of the solemn idea of your own death, and your continual approxi- mation toward it ; and see whether, under these ap- Ixxxiii plications, there will not be betrayed, in the habit of your feelings, an increasing alienation from religion. And yet you are the person to indulge an easy con- fidence, that, after you shall have gone on many years thus confirming the estrangement and aversion from it, you shall easily turn to it as your best friend ! Might it not be well to enforce it on yourself as a rule. That this your resolution to be religious some time, shall be distinctly recalled to mind in each successive instance of your doing what tends to its frustration ? When you find yourself making an effort to banish the shade of pensive feeling or grave reflection, which any circumstance of the time may have had power to throw over you, say to yourself, It is I, nevertheless, that am to be religious, and therefore to cherish such thoughts and emotions, in a season yet to come. If you pferceive yourself care- fully avoiding " the house of mourning," even though it be your friends that are visited there with sickness or death, say again, I am one day, however, to en- tertain and welcome that religion which would be there, at this time, enforced on me with such power- ful admonition. When you are entering a gay thoughtless party, to mingle in such a hilarity as any visitings of religious reflection would quell, say to yourself, That very thing which would freeze this animation of theirs and mine, shall, after a while, be the grand solace of my heart ; and this is the way I am taking to prepare myself for its being so ! If you go so far as to endure voluntarily, and without repugnance, society where serious subjects and pious men are turned to jest, and the most awful names Ixxxiv taken in vain, say, I am training myself here, through familiarity with irreligion, to give my utmost re- verence and affection to that of which I am thus abetting the scorn and profanation. If you are pro- jecting a scheme for the occupation and satisfaction of a considerable portion of your life, but cast upon a principle and plan evidently unfavourable to your spiritual welfare, reflect on it, and say again, There is another scheme to be afterwards undertaken, into which I shall pass with all the advantage of having wholly excluded the care of it from this prior one; when my lighter juvenile unconcern about religion shall have settled into an utter estrangement, as a part of the habit confirmed through my long and complete engrossment by a worldly project, then I shall need but one touch of conviction, but one re- collection of my former vow, but one act of ray will, to throw my spirit free, and become religious enough for death and for heaven. 1 repeat to you, that by this course of procrastina- tion, this scheme of reversionary piety, you are not simply losing so much, with regard to the greatest affair, but are also taking strong security against yourself that you shall not save the remainder. The worthless or noxious growth which you suffer to over- spread the first large division of your allotted tract of time, is continually extending its roots far forward, and will scatter its seeds thickly over all the space beyond. Consider how well, even at your age, you are informed of it as a truth, that whatever entwines itself with the youthful feelings, maintains a strange tenacity, and seems to insinuate into the vitality of the being. How important to watch, lest what is Ixxxv thus combining with its life, should contain a prin- ciple of moral death ! Consider, that in this earlier period you are peculiarly disposed to entertain social partialities, are perhaps giving yourself to companion- ship and friendships, or contracting more intimate relations, which must have an important influence on the growing formation of your mind into its decided character, and on the consequent tenor of your life. Now, when this social attraction combines several parties destitute of religion, they are in effect giving mutual pledges never to be religious; since they are giving and receiving the whole influence of their friendship to fix their minds in that state in which they are at present pleased with one another; that is to say, in a state of aversion to religion. And sup- posing that each of them were, nevertheless, like you, intending to be religious some time, we cannot well conceive any fairer occasion for the scoff of a malignant spirit, than to see them thus all in a league to frustrate what each of them believes he intends. This same intention, you have no reason to doubt, has been entertained, in earlier years, by many whom you now see advanced to the middle or the decline of life, without having done any thing toward its ac- complishment. Yet they were, in their time, as confident as you are now. Should not this alarm you? Some of them may have yielded up the de- sign, not by any express act of renouncement, but insensibly, in the gradual hardening of their con- sciences, their complete immersion in the world, and assimilation to its spirit; with the addition, in too many cases, of the practice of some more positive Ixxxvi kind of sin. Many of them, however, are perhaps still retaining the purpose, inert and buried under an accumulation of repressive habits; like a seed arti- ficially kept torpid, in order that it may be quickened into germination at a preferable time. The con- sciousness that they are mortal, and must be forced at last out of all that now occupies and pleases them, is soothed to repose in this presumption, that they shall bring a reserved expedient into action, before the neglect of it be fatal. But answer honestly. Do you think it probable that they will ? Do you ex- pect, if you should live to see them forward a few years further — do you expect to see them withdraw- ing their engrossed affections, breaking asunder their inveterate habits, and doing a great thing which they have systematically and wilfully prepared themselves not to do, that is, devoting themselves to God and the care of their salvation ? Perhaps you have al- lowed yourselves to imagine that you^ after having made a considerable progress in years, shall become, at every advance, proportionally more and more sensible of the shortening of life, and shall neces- sarily behold nearer the visage of death, presented through a clearer medium, and with enlarging and more defined features. How can it, you may have said, be otherwise, in the exercise of mere common sense, than that this approach toward the end should aggravate upon me the cogency of my grand duty? Do then look again at the multitude of examples around you, and see what avails them this obvious arithmetic of time. You see persons with whose names you and your companions, with a tacit plea- sure of contrast in your favour, couple the epithet Ixxxvii " old," still as heedlessly and confidently as your- selves, reckoning on time enough yet, to continue de- ferring the grand business, without peril of its being left undone. If their youthful " trust in their own heart,'' that they would ultimately apply themselves to the indispensable business, fixed that determina- tion on about some given point or period in their future life, they can pass, or perhaps have passed that period, with the same facility of neglect as any former one, finding nothing to stop them there with the peremptory exaction to perform their vow. The lying spirit which had promised to meet them at the assigned spot, to conduct them thenceforward toward heaven, appears not on the ground when they arrive there, unless to tell them that another stage, still further on, will be more advantageous for commenc- ing the enterprise. You look at the marks of time on their countenances, recollect them perhaps as in mature or middle age, when you were in infancy, and wonder they can yield themselves to such an im- position; and all this without a single reflection, that you are putting yourself in the train of the same de- lusion. How can they act so, you say, when I feel so certain of the justness of my determination to act otherwise, on the strength of my conviction of the ultimate necessity of religion ? Be you assured there is no more fatal betrayer than a right and excellent principle adopted, but consigned to future time and more favourable inclination for being carried into action. The consciousness that you are certainly keeping a good resolution, only deferred to await a " more convenient season," will help you to indulge Ixxxviii a fallacious security, while every season for accom- plishing it is passing away. Through one period of your time after another, it will appear to you infalli- bly efficacious for the next ; and no period will come as that from which you cannot look forward to still another. And this your purpose, suspended as it were in advance over your course, as a malign imita- tion, by infernal art, of the star which the sages fol- lowed to find the Saviour of the world, will probably lead you on, still confiding that it must stand ar- rested at the spot where you shall accept the grace of that Redeemer, till you are drawn to a precipice, where your deluder will vanish and you will fall. All the latter course of this pleading has pro- ceeded on the supposition that you may have a pro- tracted life. It has been an attempt to represent to you, that even if you miglit be allowed to assume a very strong probability, little short of certainty, of reaching the full term of human life — nay, that if you were certain you shall, your scheme of exempting its earlier portion from religion, on a promise to yourself and to God, of taking that for your chief concern at a more advanced stage, would still be absurd and wicked, and most dangerous. But I warn you again, do not so criminally trifle with your own reason as to proceed on any such calculation, in sight and in contempt of the thousand instances of your fellow-mortals dying in youth, and in the im- mediately following stage. Now will you, my young friend, lay such consi- derations to heart; or will you rather have it to re- Ixxxix member, perhaps when all too late, that they were pressed upon you in vain ? This expostulation, conceived as what might have been addressed to some one of the many young per- sons who may, in various times and places, have had their attention drawn for a moment to this treatise of the Rise and Progress of Religion, and averted by the seriousness of its purport, has been prolonged so exceedingly far beyond our intention, and its due proportion, that but little space is fairly left for ex- emplifying, in other forms, the trains of instructive reflection that might take rise from imagining what has happened in connection with the book. We therefore leave it for an exercise of the reader's own thoughts, if he should deem there is any profit in such an employment of them, to imagine in what manner a variety of individuals, each a specimen of the, character of a class, may be supposed to have noticed the book at one time or another; what feeling was excited at the sight, or transient inspection, or perusal of it ; how they were affected towards its subject, so inculcated; what influence, if any, it had on their determinations; and to conceive, in each case respectively, what would have been the appro- priate admonitions, which it had been well if there had been any intelligent and persuasive friend op- portunely to offer. What such a friend might pertinently have said in any of those instances, is of course the advice or remonstrance applicable in any similar cases, occurring now and hereafter, among the incalculably numerous persons whose attention xc must be attracted, more or less, to a work which is in still widening circulation. Foregoing, then, the design of specifying several other discriminated examples, we will protract this discourse only a little further, by supposing one more instance; an example, however, of a character unhap*- pily far too generally prevalent to be called that of a class. We may describe the person as a mere man of the world — yet not in the worst sense of that de- signation ; for we do not suppose him an abandoned profligate, trampling and spurning the most obvious rules of social morality; nor a scoffer at religion; nor a seorner, in a virulent spirit, of pious men; but de- voted to this world, idolizing it in his affections, ex- erting all his active energy in its pursuits, surren- dering his whole being to mingle with its interests and be conformed to its temper; and therefore ha- bitually forgetting the other world, and all the grand economy of truths, overtures, means, preparatipns, and cares relating to it. He might have been in youth just the same kind of person as the one expos- tulated with in the preceding pages; we are sup- posing him past that age, and all that belongs pecu- liarly to its character ; yet not necessarily as very far advanced in life. It cannot have failed to happen that many such persons have been accosted, as it were, by the spirit of our pious and benevolent author, in the vehicle of his book. If we may conjecture that fifty thou- sand copies have been diffused among all orders of society, and have obtained, through choice or acci- dent, with approbation or under sufferance, a position XCl in almost so many abodes, our fancy has a warrant to figure an indefinite variety of circumstances, under which these volumes have fallen in contact with such men of the world. There may have been the case of such a man's unwittingly laying his hand on the book, as one of a number which had been left him by a religious parent, opening to see what it was, as not recognizing it by its exterior, and being smitten with something like an electric shock at the sudden reflection, that for ten, or twenty, or thirty years since that parent's death, he has been no better for this or any other religious book. Another such man, on happening to fix his eye on the volume, has been struck with the recollection, inflicting perhaps a twinge of mental pain, that there was a time, a transient one, long since, in his youth, when he felt some convictions and emotions of a religious tendency ; and procured this identical book in aid of those salutary movements in his mind. Another may have chanced to notice it among books, which a better care than his had provided for the instruction of the young people of his own family ; and has perhaps had the momentary thought — what, then, are these young men and women to be reminded of religion, while / forget it? Another may have retained, from early instruction, accompanied by example, a certain impression, resting on his mind somewhat like a superstition, that the Sunday ought to be in some degree unlike his other days, and a small portion of it given to serious read- ing ; and in looking for a book of that character, he may have happened to take this, and to read enough of it to cause him a disquieted consciousness, or a xcu suspicion that his spirit and habits are not quite in the right. The case may have occurred, that such a man has caught sight of this book in the recess of an apartment where he and others were waiting to follow a dead person to the grave ; and that, under a passing gleam of right apprehension and kind feel- ing, he internally said. The Progress of Religion — I hope it was that road that the deceased took in his way to the world whither he is gone, for else it were ill with him now. It may seem as if these suppositions do not quite agree with the general description of the character, as altogether estranged from religion. Such invo- luntary and transitory excitement of a recognition of that great interest, are not, however, incompatible with a prevailing decided neglect and alienation; but, in truth, the conjectures may justly fall into a less charitable train. VVe suppose the case of such a man's observing that the book had been offered to the attention of the younger branches of his family, and admitting a slight reflection of self-rebuke. But it is not less likely to have happened, that a man of this character, on perceiving such a circumstance, has signified displeasure at this expedient for rendering the happy young creatures prematurely grave and melancholy, extinguishing, he said, their delightful vivacity, (which would soon enough be repressed by the cares and troubles of life,) by unseasonable ap- prehensions about the welfare of their souls. It is no improbable case, that the book may have come in the way of such a man just about the time when he has seen, or perhaps experienced to his injury, an instance of want of principle in some person making XCVll even in circumstances like these, the man stiil could not resolve on so serious a thing as attention to re- ligion ? No, we ean believe that he revolted from the urgent enforcement of the subject; felt as if any- other way of disposing of it were preferable to that of thinking of it ; and threw aside the book. He had recourse to some expedients of change and amusement, to relieve his drooping spirits and dark- ening days; or, perhaps, he made a strife to force his decaying powers to some farther and superfluous exertions in the world's business. It may even be conceived, that the very terms " Rise and Progress," suggesting the idea of long and laborious continuance, excited a gloomy sense of the want of commensurate- ness. between such a lengthened process, and his now shortened life; and that, through a lamentable perversity, the sadness of this consideration, instead of alarming him to an instant application to the grand concern, made him the more recoil from it, and but added to the infatuation of his consuming the short remainder of his life as he had consumed all before. Now, in each of all these instances, an intelligent Christian friend might have remonstrated in terms specially adapted to the individual's state of mind, modifying the general argument for religion to meet the cast of irreligious feeling in the particular case. And a discerning and skilful pleader in this good cause may sometimes seize upon the peculiar mode of feeling, in such a manner as to turn it to account, availing himself of it to give his remonstrance some- thing of the point and appropriation of the argumen- turn ad hominem. But we shall content ourselves E 15 XCVlll with a short address of the nature of a plain general expostulation, applicable to the general qualities of the worldly character. It is true, that the spirit required in any effort so directed, is not a little repressed by a sentiment par- taking of despondency. There is no evading the thought, Why should words, and arguments, and images of unseen things, and adjurations, be ex- pended on that man, on those men ? They will continue the same. Why should Religion, like Cassandra, waste her dictates and premonitions on a hopeless determination to the wrong ? How can it be worth while to be trying, as if it had so much as even the uncertainty of an experiment, how many missiles will rebound from a rock, or disappear in a swamp ; or how many times the taper may burn out in the vain attempt to kindle a fire in materials which contain no fuel? But we would wish to turn this very fact itself, of the dispirited sentiment which damps the Christian pleader's efforts to press religion on the attention of devoted men of the world, into a topic of admonition to them. How comes it to pass, we might say to them, that a person, whose own mind is possessed with the most absolute and mighty conviction of the importance of religion, cannot help feeling it nearly a forlorn attempt to awaken any sense of that impor- tance in you ? Has he good cause for this despon- dence? Is it his experience, his just estimate, of the character of your minds and habits, that makes him feel so; and does your self-knowledge tell you it would be too sanguine for him to feel otherwise? Is it, then, a fact, that you are hardened into a set- XCIX tied insensibility to the things which most vitally and profoundly concern you ? Have you really a power, and that power so complete that it is effectual almost without an effort, and through the inert force of habit, to meet with indifference or defiance the aspects of whatever is the most sublime, most amiable, or most tremendous, in existence? When mercy, in a celestial form, approaches to apply to your soul the redeeming principle without which it will perish, can you turn it away, coolly saying. Another time, perhaps, — or perhaps never? And in refusing it access, do you feel the satisfaction of a person who has promptly and easily dismissed an unreasonable applicant; regarding it as an arrogant requirer, rather than as a benefactor offering you inestimable good ? Do you feel, in thus being out of the power of re- ligion, a gratifying sense of immunity from one of the evils which are infesting mankind; that there is one malady against which your mental constitution is fortified, while some of your fellow-mortals, at- tacked by it, are objects almost of your pity? And do you account this exemption, and carry it upon you through the commerce of life, as a privilege of your class, which you as rightfully maintain as any other advantage, and with which it were little better than impertinence for any one to interfere, by re- presentations in favour of that from which you thus walk at liberty ? If this be the established condition of your minds, it is what ought to alarm you, like that deadly calm which, in some climates, would be an omen to you of the subterranean thunder, and of the ground heaving and rending under your feet. But, at the same time, it is what may well cause a E 2 Christian friend to be despondent of the efficacy of expostulation. He is so, because he is aware that there is nothing within your minds adequately, or in any tolerable degree, corresponding to the important and solemn terms which he must employ. He must speak of the soul, redemption, faith, holiness, conformity to the divine image; of heaven and hell, of judgment and eternity. But these are insignificant sounds, unless, when pronounced, they strike upon concep- tions already in the mind, which answer to their im- port ; conceptions which contain in them, so to speak, the ideal substance of what is meant by these signs. And he can perceive too well that this whole order of ideas has but a crude, undefined, obscure, and feeble formation in your understanding. The most solemn call of these great words, is replied to with but a faint and equivocal recognition from within. It is as if the names were called of a company of persons asleep, who answer without the distinctness of consciousness, and some of them not all. Nay, mip-ht not men of the world be found in such a con- dition of the intellect, that these words, addressed to raise the corresponding ideas in it, would be nearly like calling aloud, in a field of the dead, the names which are inscribed on their tombs? Change the subject, and see the difference. There are many terms which have their appropriate ideas most per- fectly formed in your understanding; distinct, palpa- ble, and in full dimension. Let the denominations be pronounced of divers kinds and values of worldly property, of methods and rules of transacting busi- ness, of the different stations in society, with their CI respective relations and circumstances, or of the ma- terials and accommodations for gratifying the senses; let some of these be named, and instantly the corres- ponding ideas arise in the mind, substantial and dis- tinct; so that the utlerer of the designations knows he can do with the auditor whatever depends simply on his having a right notion of the things. But when you hear some of these terms expressive of the most important meanings that could ever enter into human intelligence, how confused, uncouth, and inane, how spiritless and powerless, are the forms of thought which glimmer on your apprehension ! It is as if words pronounced to evoke mighty spirits, were answered only by the coming of the owls, bats, and insects of the twilight. The religious monitor is tempted to despond, again, because he sees that your devotion to the world is established into system, almost into mecha- nism. A very young person may be frivolous and thoughtless to the last degree; but he is variable: his present impressions may quickly give place to new ones; he may abandon one favourite pursuit for a different one; and should religion attempt to seize him at an interval of these versatile movements, it will indeed have to contend with his levity, and the radical aversion in his nature to sacred subjects, but not with a set of habits grown to a firm consistence, in a shape, we might say an organization, adapted to keep his whole soul in one steady mode of adhesion to the world. This latter is a description of the condition of many of you, its devotees. There is no longer any question whether, or in what way, you shall be wholly surrendered to it. The habitual Cll fact has taken the matter out of the province of volition. That you faithfully adhere, in spirit, to the world ; that you live for it, to-day, and to-mor- row, and each ensuing day, and wherever you may be, seems as much of course as that bodily you walk on its surface. And not only are you under this principle of determination to it as your general ob- ject, but you have a settled adjustment of feeling and estimate to its diversities respectively. You have your maxims, associations, and affections, in an or- derly state to meet and coalesce with them all and each. And your general worldly spirit preserves a consistency of its special action throughout all the detail of its objects ; the manner in which the pre- dominant law operates with respect to each, agreeing with its mode of operation in all the others^ Thus, you are men of the world not only by one general sentiment of devotedness to it, but in a systematic appropriation of that sentiment to various and num- berless particulars. While you cleave to the world generally, we may be allowed the figure of saying, that each fibre, each nerve, of your moral nature has its own particular point of application to this your sovereign good ; and all pervaded and kept in uni- formity of action by the ascendant principle; that principle by which you " serve the creature more than the Creator." While you are beheld in this firm conjunction with the world, by a general attachment, and by a distributive application of that attachment, like the Indian fig-tree connecting itself vitally, at a hundred spots, with the soil over which it spreads, it is no wonder that a person desirous of warning you not to cm make light of infinitely higher interests, should at- tempt it with very faint hope, or be discouraged from making the attempt at all. That which he has to present to you will be repelled by a principle which acts in a combination of resisting impulses, working with uniformity and constancy ; some of them pro- ceeding, perhaps, from the temper of mind acquired in commercial pursuits ; some of them from the habits of feeling which have grown from " friendship with the world," from contented and preferred association with men devoid of religion ; some of them from the- disposition produced by the study and strife to make your way upward in society; some of them from the practice of relieving the cares of business only by the indulgences of pleasure; and some of them, perhaps, from a taste for appearing as men of fashion. All this is a systematic fortification against the access of religion, to instruct, persuade, or remonstrate. And the fatal completion of the evil may be, that you are insensible of any great evil or danger in all this. For you have fully adopted the world's standard of character, according to which you may be, all this while, what are called honourable men. You may even come to take credit for considerable liberality of opinion in allowing, that it is right enough there should be in the world a class of earnest devoted re- ligionists, as well as other varieties of character; that they do very right to follow up their own convictions; their only offence being the fanaticism of insisting, that all ought to be such — that you ought to be such; whereas yours, you say, is a character much better adapted to the world we are to live in than theirso CIV So you are, on the whole, m high favour with yourselves. You may not indeed be entirely secure against occasional disturbances to your self-satisfac- tion ; there may be moments when a suspicion arises from the dark depth within that all is not right; when conscience, generally still, gives some intima- tions, like the sighs of a person beginning to recover from suspended animation ; when some glimpses of a greater economy are admitted through narrow rents and openings in the little system within which you are ■immured. But you suffer no habitual annoyance of an impression that you must alter your plan. This your general satisfaction with the part you are acting, depresses the spirit of the pleader for religion. He wants to persuade you to reflect; but how and when can he bring an adequate force of such persuasion to act on such a state of the mind ? You are so pos- sessed, he says, with your own good opinion, that any serious examination, whether it be not a delusive one, will appear to you a superfluous trouble, and the exhortation to it, officious and impertinent. But will you absolutely refuse such an exercise of your reason ? How can you have lived so long with- out feeling that so much, at least, is what a rational, accountable being ought to do ? Do it now ! What should prevent you ? You have in that spirit the power to think at this very time. You can fix it intently on the subject that you shall choose. Now is an interval which can be exempted from the in- dispensable demands of business, and, if you will it so, from the allurements to dissipation. You may, you can, this hour, recoll&ct whether there be a sub- ject of transcendent importance, which you have cv never duly considered yet; and you may choose it, instead of another subject, for present consideration. You cannot help seeing what that subject is. It is ReHgion that stands before you, with oracles, lights, and an exhibition of the most grand and awful images. It is that which represents to you, the real truth of the state of your soul toward God, tbe concern of your eternal interests, the relation you stand in to another world, the peremptory requirement of what you must do to be saved. Wliat can ever, through endless duration, be worth your considering, if this be not ? You know that religion, unless it be a fable, has all this importance, that it has this impor- tance to you, and that it has it to you noWi w^hile this day, this hour, is passing. In a matter of in- comparaby less magnitude, (say it were a most cri- tical hazard, threatening you at the point where your temporal prosperity mainly depended, and might be ruined for life,) you would feel that the concern pressed importunately and justly on the thoughts and cares of the present instant. If any one advised you to take no trouble of vigilance or exertion about it, to occupy yourself entirely with other matters, and indifferently await the event, you would spurn the suggestion, as equally unfeeling and absurd. What ! you would say, when the whole question of safety or utter ruin may be depending on the judg- ment and activity which I may exercise this day? But here is the supreme interest of your existence. It cannot be safe, you will confess it cannot, if you will give it no serious attention. But then you are confessing that you have left it till now in peril, and that it is so at this very hour — nay, in greater peril E 3 cvi than ever before, as aggravated by the guilt of such wilful neglect, and by the diminution of the term allotted for the attainment of a happy security. And can you repel from you, can you resolutely set your- self to force off its urgent application for your imme- diate attention? Look at the action of your mind. Is it really, even now, in the very effort of an impulse to drive this subject away, and are you giving your whole will to make this impulse successful? And do you feel that you are prevailing? And is it im- possible for you to reflect, at this moment, *whatitis that you are successfully doing ? Cannot you per- ceive, have you no suspicion, what dreadful principle it is that is giving you this power and this success ? Can you let it perform such a work, and not resolve to inspect its nature ? Look at it, observe its fatal operation just now going on ; and then say, honestly, whether any thing can be of a quality more execra- ble ? Do not say this is extravagant language; do not stay to mind the language at allj but fix your attention on the thing itself. Words are wind; but there is a reality there in operation, at this moment, in your mind. It is actually there — the fearful principle, which is actuating your feelings and your will to force away from your spirit the thoughts, and all the benefit of thinking, of your highest duty and interest, of your eternal salvation. If it could be suddenly revealed to you in full light, what an opera- tion this is which you are even now suffering there in your heart, no awful catastrophe in nature, no tempest, nor shock of an earthquake, would affright you so much. After an interval, we would ask you, And is it evil now done? Has the repelling principle, after so many former successes, prevailed once now ; so that the great subject which approached you, appealed to you, solicited you, displayed smiles of divine benig- nity, alternating with just menaces and frowns on your obstinacy, has been driven off, and is vanishing like the images of a disturbing dream when one awakes ? Are you now quite at your ease again, to go free into your business, conviviality, or amuse- ments? Then, what have you accomplished, — but to send an angel of mercy away, and to vanquish any last power that remained in an almost expiring con- science ? What have you gained, but to have your soul still more securely grasped by that which with- holds it from God, and a confirmed power and fa- cility of rejecting that which speaks in his name, if it should obtrude on you again ? In what new principle do you walk forth, but that of having less remaining time, and augmented disinclination, for that one thing of which the failure is perdition ? Such a view of the disposition of your minds, and of the manner in which you submit and betray them to be acted upon, chills the animation of a person who would plead with you to apply them to religion. But still we would hope better things, and that it may yet not be in vain to conjure you to reflect on this great subject as involving your welfare. Tell us whether it be utterly an idle hope, which a more perfect knowledge of you would show it foolish to entertain, that you may be induced to employ, in the exercise of such reflection, this day and hour to better purpose than any former one of your life. Why should not this be the day for a determined serious- CVlll ness of thought ? Think enough, at least, to give a reason why it should not; and think, whether it would not be worse than a shame, to refuse such an employment mthout a reason. And if the only rea- son be, that you are reluctant, consider whether that reason, that reluctance, will ever spontaneously cease. But consider, too, whether that reluctance be not itself, in truth, a mighty reason on the opposite side, as implying, in the conscious discordancy between your spirit and the subject, a disorder so formidable, that madness alone would be content to leave it un- examined and unreformed. Would that a super- human power might stand in your way just here, stop you at this point in your course, and constrain you to reflect noxso I The hours, the day, which you are just now entering on, are as yet vacant, but will soon be filled, and gone. They are coming as a space of time which might be, may be, filled with a mental exercise of immense value. Here is a sub- ject claiming to occupy them as they come on. If admitted to do so, it will indeed inflict remorse for your having sent away into the past, a long succes- sion of the portions of your time charged with no such precious contents; thus avenging itself on you for your prolonged rejection. But will that be an indication that you would have done well to reject it still, and excite your grief that it has for once ef- fectually arrested you ? Would you, under this ar- rest, struggle as to escape from an enemy, when the subject will bring with it the evidence and the con- viction, that, though with an austere and accusatory aspect, it is certainly come as a friend ? Admit it into your mind and time this once, with all its soiem- CIX nities, and even its reproaches. And if, as a con- dition of doing so, you will insist on retaining some precautionary resource against being absolutely and irrecoverably surrendered to it, you may be assured, (if you can accept so melancholy a fact for consola- tion,) that, in the strength of your corrupt nature, you will not easily lose all power of re-action, for debar- ring its entrance, when, at another time, it shall pre- sent itself to you again. There possibly are special circumstances of the present time, of a nature to enforce this exhortation. It may be, that one of you, worshippers of the world, has just experienced an ill reward of his faithful de- votion. Some grievous disappointment, perhans, some failure of a project, some fall of your fortunes, some blast on your hopes, has reduced you to a tem- porary disgust with what you have so unreservedly loved. Just now the world stands before you with faded attractions, and you feel as if you could forswear your dedication and attachment to it. Now, thouo-h this be a turn of feeling not the purest in principle, it might be made beneficial in effect. Instead of allowing your spirit to remain stagnant in a sullen and resentful mortification, v/aiting till the world, which, however cruelly it may sport with its votaries, does not easily let any of them go, shall again assume an aspect of blandishment, and renew its promises, how wise would it be, to take advantage of this reflux of your affections, to turn your thoughts toward re- ligion, and see, and try, whether there may not be something better for you there ! It would be a worthy revenge on a world that has disappointed, cheated, and wronged you, to avail yourself of the ex recoil of your heart from it, in reinforcement of the conviction, that it is time to *' seek a better country;" thus turning it into an impulse to a new-formed aim at " the prize of the high calling." But at any rate, and at the least, do not let this disturbance of your friendship with the world be lost, as a circum- stance to coincide with the remonstrance which would awaken you to serious reflection. Do not, at once, fall out with the world, and disregard or resent that which would tell you how just is your quarrel, how long since it ought to have taken place, and how in- comparably better you may do than make up the breach. Perhaps some of you have just witnessed, with indignant vexation, one of the iniquitous partialities of fortune, as you call it. A man whom you know to be of worthless or detestable character, has ob- tained, through apparent casualty, or by means of craft, or corrupt interest, or even by the most undis- guised violation of right, some remarkable advantage of enrichment or precedence ; such a thing as you had coveted, but not presumed to hope for ; or pos- sibly, as you had hoped and indefatigably laboured for, many years, but never could grasp the prize. And in the pride of this acquisition, he insulted the more deserving men, at the cost of whose disappoint- ment and injury he had made it. You exclaimed. What a world this is, where the good things go to the worst men, and merit may pine and die ! But is this the identical world to which you, neverthe- less, are so infatuated, that you will not so much as think of another? What ! are you resolved that a glaring manifestation to you of the quality of the CXI object you have idolized, shall rather serve to any effect, even that of corroding your heart to no avail, than to that of lending force to the persuasions of religion; of religion, which has uniformly testified to you that your object is — what you are now practi- cally finding it ? Would you rather be retained, resentful but still servile, for this tyrant to exhibit you in scorn as a slave, fretting indeed, but impo- tent, even in will, to revolt, than adopt the hero's language, exalted into a Christian sense and spirit, " Then, thus I turn my back; there is a world else- where ?" It may be, again, that one of you has lately seen a rival and co-eval worshipper of the world leave it. Perhaps the manner of his departing answered to the description, " driven away." You observed the long, lingering look cast after all that was receding, and the fearful glance toward what was approaching. You saw what was the result of that choice which had been made by you both, and to which he had re- mained constant nearly to the moment when an ir- resistible power interposed to rend him off. You have the images of this sad spectacle fresh now in your mind ; and those images — are they atheists there ? Or you may have beheld a less tragical exempli- fication of what the world will do for its friends, in the case of one whom you had long known as a be- liever in its promises, a zealot to its principles, and a staunch pursuer of its objects; but who, in the closing scene, relented into shame and penitential sorrow, faintly mingled with hope in the divine mercy which he implored. He declared to you his over- -CXll whelming conviction of the folly of his course and yours ; and entreated you no longer to leave your whole soul immersed in that which must, in such an hour, break away from around you, and abandon you to a desolation like his. Now recollect; at the time of receiving such an admonition, did you really think there was nothing rational in it ? While, for de- corum's sake at least, you put on a grave and assent- ing manner, did you, nevertheless, coolly say within yourself, or was there a consciousness equivalent to saying, I need not take any further thought of this? I do not wonder that this person, in such circum- stances, should talk so ; but what he says or feels has no appropriateness in its application to me. I must not let any such gloomy ideas take possession of my mind; no, not even though it be possible enough, I may ultimately come into a situation in which I shall think and feel in the same manner. We may confidently assume, that you did not, on the spot, maintain such composure, and pledge your- self to these conclusions. A certain indistinct dis- may, at the least, invaded you, to the effect of sub- duing you, with some general kind of conviction, to the formation of some general kind of purpose. Or, possibly, the impression was exceedingly powerful, the conviction a distinct act of judgment, and the resolution very determinate. And what then ? Have you since deliberately judged all this to have been a vain agitation of your spirit, a brief delirium, occasioned by a sympathetic affection from the sight of sickness, distress, and death ? If not, have the intervention of a certain number of hours and days, a short succession of risings and settings of the sun, CXIU and the return of the accustomed thoughts and em- ployments, essentially altered the merits of the case? Have these caused what was truth, and obligation, and danger, to be such no longer ? Has the mere passing of time reduced importance to inanity ? Or has it detached from you, and brought to appear as no longer your own, that grand interest which can have no reality but as a personal one, but as your own ?•— just as if you were to consider the things af- fecting your natural life (for instance your state of health or disease, your exposure to a peril, or security against it), as something existing in the abstract; a reality, indeed, but something quite separable from yourself. The circumstance, too, that by the pass- ing of the intervening time, you are carried a little nearer to the final result of your plan of life, — has this actually lessened the importance which you saw in such magnitude by that solemn light, which flashed upon you in the gloomy chamber where a rival lover of the world was penitentially preparing to leave it ? Think of a rational being so easily passing free from the hold of the strongest forms of admonition ; and spending his time to the very purpose, in effect, of reducing his apprehension of the awful magnificence of eternity, progressively to a more and more di- minutive impression against the moment when he is to plunge into it ! Should no circumstances nearly resembling th^se have occurred within your recent experience, it would be a rather unusual lot if you have not met with some incident, some turn of events, some aspect of life or death, adapted to enforce serious reflection. Look a little way back in memory, and see if no CXIV image will arise to remind you that then, and there, by such an event, such a spectacle, such a voice, you were specially admonished to consider your course. And answer it to yourself what effect that appeal to your conscience ought to have had. But do not narrowly limit such a review, as if afraid to return to those spots in past time, where the hand of a dreaded power touched you as you passed, where truth spoke to you in severe accents, or a more gentle, persuasive voice entreated you not to go thoughtlessly on. If yoii be afraid to go back thither, what is it that this apprehension tells you ? Do not limit the retro- spect, as if you had no concern with the occasions and causes that once, long since, challenged your consideration to the most important subject. Do not yield to the deluded feeling, that all those, be- ing gone so far away, have perished from all con- nexion with you ; like the portion of air which you then breathed, or the grass or flowers on which you happened to tread. For be assured they inseparably belong to your present and ultimate responsibility. They are all coming after you, however silently and unthought-of, and will be with you in the great ac- count. And if you could be induced to make an effort, in any thoughtful hour, to imagine with what a vividness of recognition, and intensity of reproach, the monitory occurrences of your past life will at last present themselves to strike upon your conscience, if they shall have been disregarded in their time, and suffered to go useless into oblivion as you have pro- ceeded on, it might have the effect of recalling them now, to combine in operation with all the other things which summon you to reflection. cxv When a religious observer sometimes has his thoughts directed upon you, he is struck with the idea, what a mighty assemblage of considerations, that should irresistibly compel you to thoughtfulness, you are insensible of. As, when we extend our contemplations conjecturally into the economy of ex- istence which surrounds us, it is suggested to thought what unembodied intelligences, what communica- tions, what agencies, what elements perhaps, what processes, there are on all sides, and many of them relating to us, but of which the senses admit no per- ception ; so in the spiritual economy, that is, the system of relations in which the immortal mind stands involved, there are realities, there are truths, of highest import, there are arguments, warning cir- cumstances, alternatives of good and evil, most vitally relating to your welfare, but non-existent to your apprehension. The very emanations of heaven, radiating downward to where you dwell, are inter- cepted, and do not touch you. It is the frequent reflection of a thoughtful mind, in observing you — what ideas, what truths, what mighty appeals, belong to the condition of this one man; and of that, de- voted and enslaved to the world — O, why is it im- possible to bring them into application ! A few words are sufficient to express such things, as, if they were to fall with their proper weight, and no more, on their spirits, enclosed, as it were, in the consolidated habits of the world, mixed and hardened in its clay, would excite a commotion through their whole insensate being, and alarm them to a sense of a new world of thoughts and interests. A few minutes of time would be enough for the enuncia- CXVl tion of what, if it could be received by them in its simple, unexaggerated importance, would stop that one man's gay career, as if a great serpent had raised its head in his path ; would confound that other's calculation for emolument ; would bring a sudden dark eclipse on that third man's visions of fame ; would tear them all from their inveterate and almost desperate combination with what is to perish, and, amidst their surprise and terror, would excite an emotion of joy that they had been dissevered, before it was too late, from an object that was carrying them down a rapid declination toward destruction. — And the chief of these things, so potent if applied, are not withheld as if secreted and silent in some dark cloud, from which we had to invoke them to break forth in lightning; they are actually exhibited in the divine revelation. This, so strange a condition, — that there are mighty truths, requisitions, overtures, promises, por- tents, and menaces, as it were close to you, suspended just over you, of a nature to demolish the present state of your mind if brought in contact with it, and that, nevertheless, it remains undisturbed, — is some- times a matter of gloomy, indignant, and almost misanthropic speculation. But in the season of bet- ter feeling, the religious beholder is excited to a benevolent impatience, a restless wish, that things so near and important to you should take hold upon you. Why cannot, he says, that which comes be- tween and renders those things, intrinsically of such awful force, actually powerless, be destroyed or re- moved? If there be a principle of repulsion, if there be a veil, if there be a shield invisibly held by a CXIX circle of this world's concerns. They start, and move, and traverse, incessantly, but still within this contracted scope; seeming to know of nothing that is revealed, or important, or possible to you beyond it. How many of them ever go, in the impulse of faith, into the spiritual region, or bring you intima- tions of having seen into a superior world ? But there is no need of thus adding question to question ; you plainly know, that the continual activity of your thoughts is centred upon an order of temporal in- terests; that there, and there almost exclusively, they are busy and never tired, morning and evening, and throughout all your times and seasons. Observe, also, your affections and passions, those feelings of the heart which often accompany the acts of thought. See what it is that most certainly awakes them at the slightest call; that attracts, at- taches, and absorbs them. Suppose that, at very many times, fallen upon indifferently and without any selection of occasions, the question were to be suddenly put, and ingenuously answered from con- sciousness at the instant, What is, just now, the most an object of complacency, desire, or solicitude? how often do you think it would happen, in a thou- sand repetitions of the question, that the answer would name any object of higher order than this world's affairs? Would it be twenty times; would it be ten ? And your schemes of active pursuit — -what is that which would be their success P Is there one of them, or any part of one of them, of which no pos- sible turn of worldly events would be the disappoint- ment? Would any thing, that should be the most cxx disastrous to your spiritual welfare, be a frustration of any one of those schemes ? We say, is it not true^ that this is your state of mind ? But, then, reflect, that you practically disown the grand relations of your nature. You endeavour not to belong, if we may express it so, to a spiritual world, but to the merely material and animal order of existence. In plainer terms, you acknowledge no good in being spirits, but to serve the earthly purposes of this short life. You do what you can to withdraw, by a resolute subsidence and degrada- tion, from that economy which holds the spirits sojourning on earth connected with every thing higher in existence. From the system constituted, (as a part of that economy,) for renovating, training, and finally exalting them, you practically make your- selves aliens and outcasts, rejecting its benefits, and wishing you could be forgotten in its jurisdiction. You are content that any other fallen beings, rather than you, should be included in the dispensation of mercy through a Mediator. And, to complete this abdication of your most solemn relations, you assume to be only in some very relaxed and undefined man- ner subjects of responsibility and retribution. All this, in effect, you are doing, in devoting yourselves, with soul and life, exclusively to the interests of this world. For what less can you be doing, while you refuse all practical acknowledgment of these grand relations, maintain a state of mind unconformed to them, employ no cares or affections upon them, and will not allow even your thoughts to be directed to them ? But is it not an enormous and fearful absur- dity, that while thus you are actually involved in CXXl relations which no power but that which could anni- hilate your being can dissolve, with a grand system, comprehending whatever belongs to the existence and interests of spirits, comprehending a method of redemption through a Mediator, an invisible state, heaven, hell, and eternity, you should form your Iffe on a plan, as if this relative condition of your spirit were abolisiied, or were nothing but a fantastic theory, and contract all the interests of your spiritual and immortal being to a span of time and earth ? Think what the predicament will be, when these disowned but indissoluble relations shall vindictively verify their reality and authority, and wrest you away from that object to which you have reduced and confined yourself, so as to be almost growing into one substance with it. Again, is it not true, that, in this devotedness to the world you are living estranged from God ? Though this was implied in the preceding represen- tation, you would do well to make it a distinct matter to be brought to the proof. Try it by any mode of questioning that would the most prominently expose the truth. For example : suppose that such a thing were at any time to take place, as that you should feel a mighty impression of the divine presence, a consciousness of being pervaded, in your every faculty, quality, and thought, by the sunbeams, as it were, of his irresistible intelligence, an affecting sense of your entire dependence, a horror for having sinned against him, an ardent aspiration to enjoy his eternal favour, and a determination, with the utmost impulse of your affections and will, to serve him thenceforward, — say whether this would not he the F 15 CXXll most amazing phenomenon that had ever happened to you? Would you not wonder, beyond all power of expression, what new moral element could have been shed around you, for your spirit to see and breathe in ? But then the fact must be, that the present state of your mind is the reverse of all this; that the Almighty God, your creator, preserver, and governor, the supreme benefactor, and the sole pos- sible giver of ultimate felicity, has hitherto been in your regard a comparatively insignificant object. The universe of his works, the revelations of his word, the directing interference of his dominion, the wonders and mysteries involved within your own ex- istence, have but feebly and seldom brought the ap- prehension of him to your minds. The good which you have enjoyed, and which could not have come to you but through an inconceivably multifarious agency of an intelligent Power, you have received as if resulting from some mechanism of nature, or imparted by the pagan unthinking soul of the world; but indeed, without reflecting on it so much as to acknowledge even tJiat for its source. The schemes which have been the chief business and interest of vour life, were formed with no express consideration whether God would approve them, and prosecuted in utter forgetfulness of dependence on him for aid and success. If the thought had spontaneously arisen, What is God to me, in sensible importance? tlie reply might have been. Nothing ; or less, at most, than that person, my friend, or that other, my foe; than that ability of my coadjutors, tljat application of art, that machinery, that sum of emolument. As to piety aspiring so high as the experience of com- CXXlll munion with God, and the influential operation of his Spirit, if such ideas, conveyed in such terms, incidentally met your notice, they appeared either unintelligible or fanatical. Recollect and question the habitual temper of your mind, whether it has not been an unwelcome thing to be reminded of God at all. If it might have been conceded to you that you should obtain what would please you most, with respect to a lasting condition of your existence, would not the wish have been something like this — that God, contenting himself with carrying on the general system of the world, only rendered a little more commodious, would allow you to live in it in- definitely onward — and let you alone? Now, if there should be an interval when you are inclined (for some of you profess to be capable of abstracted mental employments) to indulge your ima- gination in contemplating awful and portentous spec- tacles, in ideal or actual existence, you need not range in quest of such into the visionary world. Nor need you go to far-off tracts of the creation, seeking what mighty forms of evil may there have their abode. The guardians of the fearful secrets of any darJc coast might justly remand you back, to behold here, in your own place, a visitation of the most direful prodigy which can have blasted any re- gion with its presence. For here, in the condition of your spirits, the sovereign and most sacred prin- ciple of order in the creation is abjured and extermi- nated. To be most intimately in the presence, to be surrounded continually by the glory of a Being omnipotent and infinitely intelligent, existent from eternity to eternity, the originator, supporter, and F 2 cxxiv disposer of all other existence; and to feel no power* ful impression on your mind, no reverential fear, no frequent intimations even of the very fact, — is not this an astonishing violation of all rectitude, a most melancholy dereliction of all reason? This is to have your best faculties shrunk and stupified to a strange conformity with brutal nature, without its innocence and impunity. This is in effect to tell that Being, that his infinite supremacy is a vain cir- cumstance in this province of his dominion ; that his is an unnecessary and undesirable presence, tolerable only while leaving you unreminded of it, or consent- ing to be regarded with indifference. It is as if, with an inversion of piety, you would thank him only for being invisible and silent, and pray only that he would be more entirely and be always so. You tell him that the most inconsiderable of the things he has made, or even the things which men have made, are of more importance in your view than all the mag- nificence of his glory. Under the heaven and efful- gence of that glory, you deliberately involve your spirits, as it were, within little opaque spheres of matter, pleased to be secluded from the light of the universe. How can we help it, if you will regard this as a mere rhetorical and perhaps pompous display of an evil really of no formidable magnitude, and coolly pass it by with the remark, that we might as well employ sober language ? We will only say, beware that, in calling for sober language, you do not mean a language conveying a faint and unawakening ex- pression of the truth. Beware, also, that you do not, on such a subject, mistake for soberness any cxxv thing less than deep and most serious thought. And if you will but have the conscience to exercise such thought, it may be left to your own judgment to es- timate the evil involved in the undenied fact, that, being continually and inevitably in the presence and power of the Almighty, you yet are careless of this infinitely the most important circumstance of your situation. The character of that fact would be ex- posed to you in alarming manifestation, if your re- flection should cast a faithful light upon it in the in- stances in which you may have the evidence that it is a fact. Fix your attention on some of those cir- cumstances which will prove to you that you are " without God in the world," and honestly endeavour to see, in those ejiemplifications, whether it be pos- sible to overrate the irrationality, the guilt and the danger. Thus, for instance, when you feel yourself vigilantly, and even intensely solicitous about your reputation among your fellow-mortals, as if the es- sence of your happiness depended on their opinion of you, and are gratified or wounded as that opinion honours or depreciates you, reflect, that you feel no such concern, and perhaps never have felt a thou- sandth part of the measure of concern, how you stand in the account of the Governor and Judge oF the world; and then, dwell on this fact with judicial con- sideration, and answer to yourself whether there be not a profound depravity in such a state of mind. When you have been spending many hours in so- ciety, with a lively interchange of sentiments, with your attention directed to various persons, and with a variously modified interest in being in their com- pany, reflect, (for may not this be often the truth ?) CXXVl that you hardly once, all the while, recollected the presence of the greatest Benig in the universe; and then soberly consider what a grossness of spirit is proved by such an oblivion. A show of human coun- tenances and figures, a circulation of ordinary con- verse, with some intermingling excitement of vanity and competition, were enough to preclude, during the race of so many thousands of your moments, all recognition of Him, who was then preserving your life, inspecting your heart, witnessing your procedure; and who was adored by whatever nobler spirits might have their offices to perform in this part of the ter- restrial scene. Think of this, and confess that such a complete and prolonged absence of the recollection betrays a condition of mind most refractory to the training for that other society, where his presence is continually felt as the one most impressive fact, and most -animatinor cause of deli CTi- ^•f r^% .FEBK ^n»! ^