Tiiiiti 
 
J LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ! 
 
 J7£o// ,£.:,i. 
 
 UNITED STATES OP AMERICA, f 
 
i 
 
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 
 
CONSIDERATIONS 
 
 ADDRESSED 
 
 TO THE UNBELIEVER, 
 
 TO YOUNG MEN, 
 
 AND TO MEN OF THE WORLD; 
 
 THIE INTRODTJCTOBY ESSAY 
 
 ' DODDRIDGE'S RISE AKD PROGRESS OF RELIGION IN THE SOUL.' 
 
 BY' JOHN FOSTEE, : iJ^AJL , ^ 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ESSATS OX DECISION OF CHARACTEr.," ETC. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM COLLINS, 
 © 
 )UTH FREDERICK STREET, GLASGOW, 
 AND PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. 
 C 
 
<1* 
 
ADVEBTISEMENT. 
 
 The Publisher of Mr. Foster's Introductory Essay 
 to Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the 
 Soul, having been frequently solicited to publish that 
 admirable Treatise in a separate form, has been 
 induced to comply with the wishes of many of the 
 Author's friends. The present Edition is therefore 
 presented in the form in which most of his Works 
 have been recently published, that the admirers of 
 this distinguished Author may obtain this Treatise 
 uniform with his other Works. This much admired 
 Essay has always been regarded as one of the ablest 
 and most instructive of Mr. Foster's productions, and 
 it has already obtained a large circulation in connec- 
 tion with Doddridge's excellent Work. In the present 
 Edition the Essay has been divided into Chapters, to 
 mark off with greater distinctness the different lead- 
 ing subjects, and to indicate, more particularly, the 
 various classes of persons to whom the Author's so- 
 lemn and impressive considerations, on the momen- 
 tous concerns of Religion, are more specially ad- 
 dressed. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Reflections which the diversified subjects of books sug- 
 gest to the thoughtful mind, and on the influence which 
 the character of Authors, especially of Religious Books, 
 exerts on the perusal of their writings, 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Considerations addressed to the unbeliever in Revealed 
 Religion on the folly of rejecting Divine Revelation and 
 the blessings which Christianity offers to the world, . 32 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Considerations addressed to Young Persons on the duty 
 and advantages of early piety, and on the fatal danger 
 of procrastination and of neglecting the momentous con- 
 cerns of Religion in youth, 54 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Considerations addressed to men of the world on the dan- 
 ger of a too exclusive devotedness to business and other 
 worldly pursuits to the neglect of the great and para- 
 mount interests of Religion, Ill 
 
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE DIVERSIFIED SUBJECTS OF 
 BOOKS SUGGEST TO THE THOUGHTFUL MIND, AND 
 ON THE INFLUENCE WHICH THE CHARACTER OF AU- 
 THORS, ESPECIALLY OF RELIGIOUS BOOKS, EXERTS 
 ON THE PERUSAL OF THEIR WRITINGS. 
 
 THERE are more ways to derive instruction 
 from books than the direct and chief one 
 of applying the attention to what they contain. 
 Things connected with them, by natural or cas- 
 ual association, will sometimes suggest them- 
 selves to a reflective and imaginative reader, and 
 divert him into secondary trains of ideas. In 
 these, the mind may, indeed, float along in per- 
 fect indolence, and acquire no good ; but a seri- 
 ous disposition might regulate them to a profit- 
 able result. 
 
 Of these extraneous ideas, the most obviously 
 occurring, as being the most directly associated 
 
10 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 
 
 with the book, may be some recollections or 
 conjectures concerning the author. Perhaps the 
 most remarkable circumstances of his life, and 
 qualities of his character, are well known. Some 
 of these may come on the reader's mind, sus- 
 pend his attention to the written thoughts, and 
 draw him away into meditation on the person, 
 perhaps now no longer on earth, who once 
 thought them, and deliberately put them in the 
 words just seen on the page. 
 
 And the reminiscences, which thus bring what 
 the author was into conjunction with what he 
 has written, display the relation between them, 
 greatly varying in character in the different in- 
 stances. The book, we will suppose, teaches 
 genuine wisdom, and forcibly inculcates the best 
 principles ; and it may be that the author is re- 
 membered or recorded to have been worthy of 
 his doctrine, an example of the virtues of which 
 we are admiring him as the advocate, and one 
 of the excellent of the earth. In this case we 
 have a pleasing reflection from his character 
 shed on his pages. It is the whole man, faith- 
 fully affirming to us, with his heart and life, all 
 that his language expresses in testimony to truth 
 and goodness. The living spirit and practice 
 of the man have left an evidence and a power 
 to animate these sentences of the now silent 
 instructor. If, at this happy departure, his 
 
SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 11 
 
 "works followed him," they still also follow his 
 words. And thus the reader feels the benefit 
 of that principle of association by which his 
 thoughts, at some moments, pass from the writ- 
 ing to the author. 
 
 But a very different case is too possible, in 
 which a dark haunting of the author's memory 
 shall at times cast a shade over sentences bright 
 with intelligence, strong in the assertion, per- 
 haps in the vindication, of important principles 
 of truth and virtue, and expressed with all the 
 appearance of sincere respect for them. The 
 idea of him may intervene with the effect of a 
 counteracting malignant genius, to blast the 
 fairest, and enervate the strongest, forms of 
 thought which he has presented to please and 
 instruct us. They cannot speak to us without 
 our seeming to hear an under voice, as if mock- 
 ing the attention and complacency which we are 
 beginning to give to them. There may have 
 been left such memorials of the author's cha- 
 racter, as to force upon us a doubt whether he 
 was honest in what he wrote ; whether the prin- 
 ciples which he displayed so much ability in 
 maintaining were his own sincere convictions. 
 Or, where there may not be cause for so grave a 
 suspicion, it may be too probable or evident that 
 his exertions were applied in a mere professional 
 capacity, on a calculation of distinction and ad- 
 
12 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 
 
 vancement, and without any cordial sense of the 
 value of truth. Or, while we may be convinced 
 that we are reading the honest dictates of his 
 judgment, and that he did really feel, at the 
 time of writing, a concern about their applica- 
 tion to his own conduct, we may have the mor- 
 tification to know that the tenor of his life, or 
 many circumstances in it, were in melancholy 
 contrariety to his book. It is even related of a 
 man of genius, of dissipated habits, that he pub- 
 lished a book of piety, written by him in perfect 
 good faith, and for the very purpose of imposing 
 a restraint on his own follies and vices, by this 
 expedient of combining with the testimony of 
 his conscience, a formal pledge to the public, — 
 and that he did it in vain. 
 
 This dark obtrusion of the author's character 
 may tend, in its immediate effect, to lessen the 
 force of the sentiments and arguments by which 
 he seemed to be training us to right judgment 
 and practice. If a man who could think with 
 such clear intelligence, could reason so convin- 
 cingly, could estimate the quality of things, as it 
 would appear to us, so impartially and justly, 
 and could advise and inculcate with such gravity, 
 and semblance of being in earnest, — if such a 
 man might, nevertheless, be even sceptical re- 
 specting the very principles which he seems to 
 prove, or might, while believing them, maintain 
 
SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 13 
 
 them with no better intention than that of mak- 
 ing a display of his ability, in order to advance 
 himself in fame or lucre, or might feel a sincere 
 esteem for the truths and precepts which he 
 taught, and yet allow himself to act in flagrant 
 violation of them, — can there be any real autho- 
 rity, any solid importance in the instructions we 
 are receiving from his book ? But this inaus- 
 picious relation of the author to his writings 
 may turn to the reader's benefit, if he will be 
 quite serious. It will force on his view another 
 exposure and exemplification of the sad disorder 
 into which our nature has fallen ; it will show 
 him of how little avail is a mere intellectual ex- 
 ercise of the mind on important truth ; and how 
 much more is indispensable to the salutary effect 
 of right principles than a bare assent of the 
 judgment, however decided. It will admonish 
 him that the efficacy of truth depends on a ha- 
 bitual communication of the soul with the 
 God of truth. He has the author revisiting him, 
 as from the dead, to apprise him by example, 
 that truths the most important may pass in the 
 train of his thoughts, or may be retained in his 
 judgment as his fixed opinions, all in vain, un- 
 less they be brought and kept in contact with 
 his conscience, and his conscience be kept habi- 
 tually reverent to the Supreme Authority. And 
 shall our Lord's declaration respecting a real 
 
14 REFLECTIONS WHICH TnE 
 
 intervention of one from the departed be verified 
 in this case too ; so that it shall be entirely un- 
 availing for this gloomy apparition to the reader's 
 mind, to warn him against trifling with the seri- 
 ous instructions in the book, as he that wrote 
 them had trifled, and adding one more to the 
 number of those who have deliberately gone the 
 way to ruin, bearing a lamp lighted by heaven 
 in their hand ?■ 
 
 This representation of the secondary advan- 
 tage derivable from books supposes them to be 
 read. But, even in the most cursory notice of 
 them, when the attention is engaged by no one 
 in particular, ideas may be started of a tendency 
 not wholly foreign to instruction. A reflective 
 person, in his library, in some hour of intermit- 
 ted application, when the mind is surrendered to 
 vagrant musing, may glance along the ranges of 
 volumes with a slight recognition of the authors, 
 in long miscellaneous array of ancients and mo- 
 derns. And that musing may become shaped 
 into ideas like these : — What a number of our 
 busy race have deemed themselves capable of 
 informing and directing the rest of mankind ! 
 How many who were powerful in thought, or 
 laborious in research, have had their brief sea- 
 son under the sun, have attained their respec- 
 tive shares of influence and fame, and are now 
 no longer on earth ! What a vast amount is 
 
SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 15 
 
 collected here of the results of the most strenu- 
 ous and protracted exertions of so many minds ! 
 What were in each of these claimants, that the 
 world should think as they did, the most prevail- 
 ing motives? How many of them sincerely 
 loved truth, honestly sought it, and faithfully, to 
 the best of their knowledge, declared it? "What 
 might be the circumstances and influences which 
 determined in the case of that one author, and 
 the next, and 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 themselves, and to their 
 being the successful teachers of wisdom ? How 
 many of them were actuated by a genuine de- 
 sire 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 contents of these accumulated volumes con- 
 stitute a chaos of all discordant and contradic- 
 tory principles, theories, representations of facts, 
 
16 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 
 
 and figurings of imagination ? Could I not in- 
 stantly 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 sneering contempt, against the dog- 
 mas and theories of one another, and conflicting 
 in a huge Babel of all imaginable opinions and 
 vagaries. 1 Within these assembled volumes, how 
 many errors in doctrine may there not be main- 
 tained ; how many bad practical principles pal- 
 liated, justified, or displayed in seductive exem- 
 plification ; how many good ones endeavoured 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 fan- 
 tastic movement, mocking at its self-importance, 
 diverted at its follies, gratified most of all when 
 it is perverted to the greatest mischief; and ma- 
 lignantly providing for the perpetuation of the 
 
 1 For example, the work of Brucker. 
 
SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 17 
 
 effect of all this, through subsequent time, by 
 instigating the ablest of the minds thus sported 
 with, to keep their own perversions in operation 
 on posterity through the instrumentality of their 
 books ? If such a thing might be as the inter- 
 vention of the agency of a better and more po- 
 tent intelligence, 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 acquainted 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 exam- 
 ined. But being apprised, in a general way, of 
 the qualities of a large proportion of them ; hav- 
 ing learned something of the characters of 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 addicted, he necessarily knows 
 that the multifarious collection contains innu- 
 merable things at variance with intellectual and 
 
 B 
 
18 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 
 
 moral rectitude. He knows, that if each author 
 had one living disciple wholly obsequious to him, 
 and if all these disciples could be brought toge- 
 ther, there would be a company in which almost 
 every error of the human understanding, and 
 every wrong disposition and practice would have 
 an advocate. 
 
 Such ideas, arising in the exterior survey of 
 the works of so many intellects, may yield some 
 instruction to a reflective man. While the 
 swarm of notions and conceits of fancy comes 
 upon his mental sight thick and tumultuous, 
 and as lawlessly capricious in their shapes as the 
 imps figured as thronging 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 cap- 
 able of procluciug, through some disastrous lapse 
 into disorder. He may consider what the ra- 
 tional faculty has been, and would ever be, in 
 the absence of divine revelation ; and also what 
 necessity there is for a corrective and regulating 
 influence from above on the mind, if, notwith- 
 standing 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, with- 
 out simplicity in his motives, and a conscienti- 
 ous care of the procedure of his judgment. He 
 
SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 19 
 
 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 pas- 
 sion 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 be- 
 yond 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 
 oblivion. 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 suggested to his thoughts, with 
 respect to one of them and another, whether, on 
 a Christian estimate of things, he would be de- 
 liberately willing, were it possible, 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 man- 
 kind, as those celebrated men. While pronoun- 
 
20 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 
 
 ring their names and looking at these volumes, 
 in which they have left a representative exist- 
 ence on earth, left the form and action of their 
 minds embodied in a more durable vehicle than 
 their once animated clay, how striking to think, 
 that somewhere, and in some certain condition, 
 they themselves are existing still — existing as 
 really and personally as when they were revolv- 
 ing the thoughts and writing the sentences which 
 fill these books ! From the character of these 
 images of their minds, these enshrined statues, 
 created to receive homage for them after they 
 are gone, what may be deemed of their present 
 condition elsewhere ? The musing of our con- 
 templatist may at times be led to solemn conjec- 
 tures at the award which these great intellectual 
 performers have found in another state ; and he 
 follows 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 un- 
 questionably done very great and almost unmix- 
 ed good. And he may be reminded of that 
 sovereignty of the Governor of the world in his 
 selection and appointment, by which minds 
 greatly below the highest order of natural abi- 
 lity may be rendered pre-eminent in usefulness. 
 It may also occur to him, diverting for an in- 
 stant from all the ranks and varieties of those 
 
SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 21 
 
 who have aspired to be teachers of mankind, to 
 reflect how many humble spirits, that never at- 
 tempted any of the thousand speculations, nor 
 revelled in the literary luxuries contained in these 
 books, have nevertheless passed worthily and 
 happily 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 previously been much more 
 powerful minds. And finally, when he has such 
 evidence that this world has been always a tene- 
 brious and illusory scene, for the search after 
 truth by a spiritual nature itself weak, perverted, 
 and obscured, he may surely feel some aspira- 
 tions awakened toward that other world, where 
 the objects of intelligence will be unvailed to 
 faculties rectified and nobly enlarged for their 
 contemplation. 
 
 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 thinking of the authors. But the same books 
 may also excite some interesting ideas, through 
 their less obvious but not altogether fanciful as- 
 sociation with the persons who may have been 
 their readers or possessors. The mind of a 
 thoughtful looker over a range of volumes, of 
 
22 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 
 
 many dates, and a considerable portion of them 
 old, will sometimes be led into a train of con- 
 jectural 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 respec- 
 tively follow the train of thoughts ? How many 
 of them were honestly intent on becoming wise 
 by what they read ! How many sincere prayers 
 were addressed by them to the Eternal Wisdom 
 during the perusal ? How many have been de- 
 termined, in their judgment or their actions, by 
 these books ? What emotions, temptations, or 
 painful occurrences, may have interrupted 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 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 pro- 
 ceeded along the narrative, approving and ad- 
 miring ; 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 
 
SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 23 
 
 have perused them are dead ; each made an exit 
 in a manner and with circumstances of its own ; 
 what were the manner and circumstances 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 asso- 
 ciation, what an element of intense significance, 
 would invest some of these volumes, if I could 
 have a momentary 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 per- 
 sons 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 tem- 
 per of spirit which is sensible of intimations 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 ! And the minds which looked 
 from within through those countenances, con- 
 versing with the thoughts of other minds per- 
 haps long withdrawn, even at that time, from 
 among men — what and where are thev now? 
 
24 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 
 
 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 clos- 
 ing 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 correspond- 
 ing 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 preced- 
 ing reader (and suppose him signified by name) 
 is now in the experience of a fact, true in prin- 
 ciple to these anticipations, but far transcending 
 in degree— how powerfully should I be arrested 
 at those passages, as if I were come to an open- 
 ing from the invisible world, through which I 
 could hear "sounds of lamentation and woe," or 
 songs of triumph, from the identical beings who, 
 at a certain hour in 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 
 
SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 25 
 
 or enraptured 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 yet unseen good or 
 evil, and that very soon I shall leave the books 
 in my turn, and arrive at the consequence ? 
 
 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 accom- 
 panied 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 indi- 
 vidual as actually having possessed this volume ; 
 and perhaps there are here and there certain 
 marks which should indicate an attentive peru- 
 sal. 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 
 effectually persuade him ? Was his conscience, 
 at some of these passages, disturbed or calm ? 
 In what manner did he converse on these sub- 
 jects with his associates ? What were the most 
 marked features of his character — what the most 
 
26 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 
 
 considerable circumstances of his life — in what 
 spirit and expectations did he approach and 
 reach its close ? The book is perhaps such a 
 one as he could not read without being cogently 
 admonished that he was going to his great ac- 
 count. He went to that account — how did he 
 meet and pass through it ? This is no vain re- 
 very. He, the man who bore and wrote this 
 name, did go, at a particular time, though unre- 
 corded, to surrender himself to his Judge. But 
 I, who handle the book that was his, and ob- 
 serve 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 
 
SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 27 
 
 the act of presenting it to him. This may 
 awaken a train of remembrances leading away 
 from any relation to the hook, 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 sen- 
 timents. The author spoke to any one indiffer- 
 ently — to no one in particular; but the sentiments 
 seem to be especially applied to me, when they 
 come in this connection with the memory of one 
 who was my friend. Thus he would have spo- 
 ken 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 sometimes 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 signifi- 
 cance, a more applying principle, into its import- 
 ant sentiments ; thus retaining him, though in- 
 visibly, 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 per- 
 
28 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 
 
 mitted to receive intimations 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, perceive 
 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 
 luminousness pervading the lines, to intimate 
 that a friendly intelligence that does not forget 
 me, would still and again enforce on my consci- 
 ence 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 imagination, without 
 any discord with my reason, apprehends 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 influ- 
 ential relation dissolved by the withdrawment 
 from mortal intercourse ; so that let my friends 
 die, and I am as loose from their hold upon me 
 as if they had ceased to exist, or even never had 
 existed ? 
 
 In this slight exemplification of the manner 
 in which the sight of an assemblage of books may 
 
SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 29 
 
 awaken serious reflection, by recalling to our view 
 the persons who are imagined or known to have 
 possessed or read them, we are supposing the as- 
 sociation confined to the particular volumes on 
 the spot. Any attempt at widening the scope of 
 reflection toward the whole extent of all the edi- 
 tions and copies of each book, would confuse and 
 dissipate the meditation in a multiplicity incon- 
 ceivable and endless. Think of any one book 
 that has been long and extensively circulated — 
 suppose 'Doddrige's Rise and Progress of Reli- 
 gion in the Soul.' The immense number of im- 
 pressions have engaged the attention, less or more, 
 of hundreds of thousands of persons. Each of 
 those copies has had its own particular destina- 
 tion, and many of them have, doubtless, been at- 
 tended with remarkable circumstances, though to 
 us unknown. If some of the most memorable 
 could be brought to our knowledge, in connec- 
 tion with the individual and still existing copies 
 which they befell, what an interest would be at- 
 tached to those books, bearing such memorials 
 of the past ! Imagine by what a strange diver- 
 sity of persons, as to disposition, mental endow- 
 ment, conduct, age ; in what a variety of situa- 
 tions, under how many peculiar conjunctures of 
 occurrence ; and with what dissimilar impressions 
 and results, the book has been perused or no- 
 ticed! It is striking, to a degree even awful, to 
 
30 REFLECTIONS WHICH THE 
 
 reflect what such a book must have done; to how 
 many it may have imparted thoughts new and 
 affecting, and which nothing could expel; how 
 many it may have been made the mean of leading 
 into a happy life, and to a happy end; how many 
 it has arrested, disturbed, and warned, whom it 
 could not persuade; of how many it has aggra- 
 vated the responsibility, more than influenced the 
 conduct. So great a number and diversity of ac- 
 countable beings, unknown, for the most part, to 
 one another, scattered here and there, over more 
 than one country, and over a space of time ap- 
 proaching to a century, have come into some cer- 
 tain relation to this one book! Among them, 
 many a single instance might, if the case could 
 be fully brought to our knowledge, exhibit a re- 
 markable history of a train of thought and emo- 
 tion, of determination and practical result; pos- 
 sibly including singular incidents, opportune and 
 auspicious, or of disastrous influence. And who 
 shall presume to cast any thought toward an as- 
 signable duration of the effect resulting to so many 
 persons, from their attention having fallen on this 
 work, when that effect is gone, or is to go, into 
 the interests of eternity ? Let the idea of its un- 
 kown prolongation be combined with that of the 
 number of beings experiencing it, and it would be 
 no extravagant fantasy to believe, that the pious 
 author may find it one of the amazements of his 
 
SUBJECTS OF BOOKS SUGGEST. 31 
 
 future enlarging knowledge, to have a manifesta- 
 tion in some way unfolding itself to him, of even 
 a minor part of the consequences of what he 
 wrote. 
 
 It is but a diminutive portion of what must 
 have happened to the book, in relation to its for- 
 mer readers and transient inspectors, that we can 
 bring within the view of our mind, with any dis- 
 tinctness of apprehension. But it is easy to re- 
 present to ourselves a few instances of so general 
 a description, that it must be certain there have 
 been many such. And we may perhaps be in- 
 dulged in the hope of inducing somewhat of a 
 serious and favourable predisposition, 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 exemplifications 
 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 appro- 
 priate considerations. We would wish to fall on 
 such questions, persuasives, or expostulations, as 
 might have been pertinently addressed, and pos- 
 sibly in some instances were addressed to the per- 
 sons so described, by a sensible religious friend; 
 whose character we may be allowed to personate 
 in representing how his office might be perform- 
 ed. 
 
32 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED TO THE UNBELIEVER IN 
 REVEALED RELIGION ON THE FOLLY OF REJECTING 
 DIVINE REVELATION AND THE BLESSINGS WHICH 
 CHRISTIANITY OFFERS TO THE WORLD. 
 
 IT would be of little use to expatiate on the 
 supposition (not an improbable one) that such 
 a book may casually, at one time or another, have 
 fallen under the transient notice of a decided un- 
 believer in revealed religion ; an unbeliever, there- 
 fore, in effect, in religion altogether. We can easi- 
 ly conceive the supercilious air and the note of 
 scorn at the sight of what cost the excellent au- 
 thor so much earnest labour, 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; 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 
 
CONSIDERATIONS, ETC. 33 
 
 closing well. He could not be unapprised of such 
 things belonging to its history, unless we sup- 
 pose him more ignorant of the extension and ef- 
 fect of what may be called our religious literat- 
 ure, 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 know- 
 ledge of this did notat all modify the tone of con- 
 tempt in which he repeated the title of the book 
 to give it a new turn: 'Kise and Progress of — ■ 
 delusion, superstition, nonsense! Bise of an ig- 
 nis fatuus, from fermenting ignorance, to glim- 
 mer and ramble in a progress to extinction and 
 nothing!' And he was elated in the self-com- 
 placency of being so much more wise and fortun- 
 ate than all such writers and all their believing 
 readers. 
 
 But was it a self-complacency quite entire and 
 unmingled, on which could be maintained in 
 steady uniform tenor, through the diversity of cir- 
 cumstances, and the varying moods of the mind. 
 Let us suppose that, soon after his indulging this 
 contempt of the book and its subject, some griev- 
 ous occurrence, or even the more 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 supposi- 
 
 c 
 
34 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 tion. that it could have been suffered to remain 
 anywhere near him. We may imagine the visi- 
 tant 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 realty think as they write,) and their 
 disciples, 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 im- 
 mortal principle, their infinite value ! Whereas 
 we by virtue of reason disenchanted and illum- 
 inated, could tell them that this soul, so fondly 
 idolized, so ludicrously extolled, is nothing more 
 than an accident of corporeal organization, and 
 necessarily perishes with the material frame— 
 with the body, as they call it in contradistinc- 
 tion, and speak of it in terms of comparative con- 
 tempt, as if they possessed something incompar- 
 ably more noble. They are for ever, too, refer- 
 ring to a Supreme Being, with whom they fancy 
 they are standing in some mysterious and sub- 
 lime relation. They talk of his favour, his provi- 
 dence, his grace: and actually imagine they can 
 hold a direct communication with him, indulg- 
 ing a fantastic notion of some special good to be 
 
TO THE UNBELIEVER. 35 
 
 obtained from him by importunate solicitation. 
 "What an inflation of vanity — to fancy that such 
 a being (if there be such a one) must be contin- 
 ually thinking of them; 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 
 favour ! And what a wretched bondage of sup- 
 erstition — 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 con- 
 straint of an imaginary obligation to consult the 
 will of some invisible and unknown authority ! 
 Our privilege of sounder reason reduces and res- 
 tores us to ourselves, from all such visionary am- 
 plitude of relations; and exempts us from all the 
 vain solicitudes and distractions of an unremit- 
 ting endeavour to live in consistency with them. 
 It is enough that we hold our transient being un- 
 der certain laws of nature, fixed in the system of 
 the world, to which it is more easy to submit, 
 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 allow- 
 ance to follow our own inclinations as far as we 
 can. If there be an Almighty power, we may 
 well believe he has other aifairs to mind than 
 
36 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 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 
 confessed 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 for the dictates of our rea- 
 son: our licence of acting as we desire would be 
 surrendered in believing it; and we will not be- 
 lieve it. 
 
 To crown the whole set of delusions which 
 these people call their faith, they are actually 
 persuaded that there remains for men a consci- 
 ous 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 allusion. Nor can we deny, that, 
 through the medium of such a notion, these en- 
 thusiasts have a view of death vastly different 
 
TO THE UNBELIEVER. 37 
 
 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 re- 
 ceived messengers or visions from another world, 
 to inform them of a splendid allotment and re- 
 ception 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 faith have resigned their life with exulta- 
 tion, not a few of them under tortures inflicted 
 for their fidelity to this their superstition. Well, 
 the delusion and the existence broke up together. 
 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 their sudden fall, one after another, into no- 
 thing. We envy them not the ambitious aspir- 
 ings which cheat them out of the enjoyment of 
 this world, never, assuredly, to repay them in 
 another. If we lose anything 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 
 
38 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 their gloomy moments, with alarms of a miser- 
 able one. Besides, a happiness of such a nature 
 as they dream of would be little congenial with 
 the inclinations which actuate us, and which we 
 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 infirmities 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 exist- 
 ence, 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 
 Eeligion in the Soul,' and with the gravest ear- 
 nestness afflicting themselves with a superstitious 
 discipline for the attainment of an imaginary 
 heaven, with the frequent intrusion of the dread 
 of an equally fictitious hell. 
 
 Now, could the supposed speaker, without 
 plainly belying the matter, have made out the 
 case for congratulation in terms much more gra- 
 
TO THE UNBELIEVER. 39 
 
 tifying than these? But we may reasonably 
 doubt whether a strain like this, expressed in a 
 confident tone of superior wisdom, but so pal- 
 pably betraying, with inadvertent honesty, the 
 sordid and disconsolate character and adjuncts 
 of the vaunted privilege, would be listened to 
 with complacency, 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 oc- 
 casion to indulge contempt or pity in their turn. 
 I could almost wish that I were under the same 
 delusion. 
 
 It would have contributed little to recover 
 him from this recoil of feeling, if just about the 
 same time an intelligent religious man had fal- 
 len 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 arro- 
 gance of irreligion. — I am rather sorry (we may 
 
40 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 suppose him to say,) that a book like that, writ- 
 ten with the most simple and benevolent 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 quality or dishonest intention, which I 
 believe are the objects of your favour. How- 
 ever, a work which has engaged the most seri- 
 ous attention, and powerfully operated on the 
 character of multitudes, and will do so of multi- 
 tudes 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 
 examination, 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 illus- 
 trious in humanity. So honoured, what can it 
 lose, think you, of its dignity and venerableness, 
 by the refusal of your homage ? It can, I re- 
 peat, afford that you should be its rejecters 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 
 impunity 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 
 
TO THE UNBELIEVER. 41 
 
 imposture, — a light of the same kind, (if so grave 
 a topic would allow so ludicrous an allusion,) as 
 that which was obtained where the satirist re- 
 ports to have seen the wise men at work to 
 extract sunbeams from cucumbers. But when, 
 in this self-assurance of rectified understanding, 
 you are indulging your contempt of religion, 
 does the thought never strike you, what a very 
 curious chance it was that this brighter illumi- 
 nation, under which the old imposture vanishes, 
 should fall exactly on you f 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 disperse the fog ? Was 
 yours the spirit to contemplate with comprehen- 
 sive survey, in pure serenity of temper, the the- 
 ory of religion ? If, from moral causes, you 
 needed and ivished that religion should not be 
 true, was that the security for impartial enquiry, 
 and undeceptive conclusions ? If you experi- 
 enced what you thought injustice (or I will sup- 
 pose it really such) from persons of religious 
 profession, and your resentment against them 
 grew into reaction against religion itself, was 
 that the proper mood for examining its autho- 
 rity ? If you had yourself made pretensions to 
 piety, but, forfeiting your Christian character by 
 misconduct, were censured or disowned by a re- 
 ligious community with which you had been 
 
42 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 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 yourself to the companion- 
 ship, through the attraction of their irreligion, 
 of men whom you knew to be unprincipled and 
 profligate, and 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-compla- 
 cency, in persons of your principles ; but you 
 may believe that religion will suffer no default 
 of its honours, by not having such as you for 
 adherents. 
 
 I allow that you have your advantages in its 
 rejection. Indeed, why should I deny this very 
 thing to be one — that you can think of such a 
 mode of deliverance from it, and not be stifled 
 with shame ? You have the still greater privi- 
 lege of being set loose from the constraint of 
 many obligations and prohibitions. You are a 
 "chartered (seZ/'-chartered) libertine," and can 
 give yourself freely away to pleasures, amuse- 
 ments, or ambition. And you boast that you 
 have the high advantage of being intent on rea- 
 lities, while the captives of religion, you say, 
 dragged or threatened off from a thousand at- 
 
TO THE UNBELIEVER. 43 
 
 tractive objects and opportunities, are consum- 
 ing their spirits and life on mere ideas, on the 
 imaginations of some intangible, unseen, and re- 
 versionary good. But suspend, for a moment, 
 your boast about this reality of the materials of 
 your happiness. Say whether it be not a fact, 
 that you are in no other possession of your fav- 
 ourite objects than merely in idea, during the 
 far greater proportion of your time. Your think- 
 ing of them, wishing for them, imagining how 
 delightful would be the possession of them; con- 
 triving how to attain them, feeling how wretch- 
 ed and impatient you are in not having them 
 yet, fretting at the obstacles, raging at your dis- 
 appointments ; again eagerly anticipating them, 
 as now nearly within your reach ; being morti- 
 fied 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 all this ? Nearly the 
 same as that of a fair garden of fruit to a man 
 looking at it, or attempting it across a treacher- 
 ous 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 ? 
 
44 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 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 as- 
 pire after, is confessedly something not belong- 
 ing 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 empowered to make a 
 larger appropriation of what the real world con- 
 tains and offers. Had I remained servile to that 
 domination, you will exclaim, what an interdict 
 should I have met, whichever way I turned ! 
 This object I must not have put forth my hand 
 toward at all ; this other, I must beware of fol- 
 lowing beyond a certain length. If, thus en- 
 closed round with a restriction from so many 
 desirable things, I could soar aloft, that were 
 well. I had leave to mount up through the sky, 
 to walk ideally in a paradise, 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 autho- 
 rity, have burst through the restricting circle ; 
 and now, see me here in possession or command 
 
TO THE UNBELIEVER. 45 
 
 of things which need no faith to give them sub- 
 stance, 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 con- 
 viction, that you have been nevertheless the dupe 
 of illusion ? As a purveyor to your senses, or 
 as a gay spirit, or as a pertinacious aspirer to 
 some pitch of pre-eminence above your fellow- 
 mortals, in wealth or display or power, you may, 
 in some instance or measure, have succeeded in 
 converting the mere images into the very sub- 
 stance ; exulting, I may suppose, to think how 
 much you owed in this achievement to your 
 emancipation from all religious belief: but re- 
 collect, 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 ima- 
 gination, which had so long prompted you on 
 with assurance 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 religion, 
 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 
 
 
46 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 good, and observe that the proportion of perhaps 
 nineteen parts in twenty of all this is not the in- 
 terest of actual possession, and then make the 
 deduction for the feelings 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 appear that you 
 have an extremely narrow ground for your boast 
 of being a man for the realities of good, in con- 
 trast 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 satisfac- 
 tion added together, would amount to as much 
 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 limi- 
 tations imposed by the constitution of nature 
 and society, of the licence conferred by your in- 
 fidelity. And so high is your advantage over 
 those who, while indulging the hope of an im- 
 mortal happiness, can make more than you can 
 of this world itself, under the sanction of Chris- 
 t an principles in their selection and pursuit. 
 
TO THE UNBELIEVER. 47 
 
 But, while forced to admit so humiliating a 
 representation, you will perhaps, in the reaction 
 of pride, say, that your being in possession of 
 truili is itself alone a noble eminence that you 
 have attained above the subjects of an impos- 
 ture, the deluded believers 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 sus- 
 pect 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 some- 
 times come close to present a ghastly visage to 
 you through the very windows of your strong- 
 hold. I have observed in men of your class, 
 that they often appear to regard the arrayed evi- 
 dences of revealed religion, not with the simple 
 aversion which may be felt for error and decep- 
 tion, but with that kind of repugnance which 
 betrays a recognition of adverse power. Say 
 what penance you could not rather undergo, or 
 of which your most favourite pleasures, (even of 
 those in which you verify your privilege of ex- 
 emption from the authority of religion,) you 
 would not rather deny yourself, for a consider- 
 
48 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 able time, than be obliged to study deliberately, 
 in sober retirement, a few of the works most dis- 
 tinguished for strength of argument in defence 
 of Christianity : though this, it might be pre- 
 sumed, should be a fair 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 com- 
 pletely from the subject, by throwing themselves 
 into the whirl of amusement, into business, con- 
 viviality, or intemperance. But it is not the 
 hero's part to affect to be occupied with neces- 
 sary employments, or to hide himself in a throng 
 of masks and revellers, when he descries the an- 
 tagonist approaching to challenge him. 
 
 But it may happen, that the subject, in its 
 menacing aspect, will present itself to you under 
 circumstances which preclude this escape. And 
 you cannot be unapprised what a striking dif- 
 ference, in spirit and deportment, we have some- 
 times 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 differ- 
 ence has become quite prodigious, when the par- 
 ties have sensibly approached their last hour. 
 
TO THE UNBELIEVER. 49 
 
 You cannot have forgotten instances among those 
 now lost to your fraternity, of some whose clo- 
 sing 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 whom they had 
 learned them ; called out on pious relatives, ab- 
 sent, or even dead ; implored the intercession of 
 Christian friends ; as if, ridiculed so often before 
 for their faith, they were now believed 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 principles and their bravery. It 
 would betray a contemptibly 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, 
 
 D 
 
50 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 which may have lain latent from the infection 
 of early false instruction. Allow the case to be 
 put so, looking no farther ; and even then, if you 
 were a thoughtful man, and apt, as comports with 
 that character, to look forward, the anticipation 
 of so frightful a scene as possible, would be 
 enough to quench many a lively sparkle, to em- 
 bitter many an unhallowed gratification, to re- 
 press many an irreligious daring, to dispirit many 
 an ambitious project, to mortify many a proud 
 sentiment. But there is another thing, not to 
 be overlooked, 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 con- 
 fession, 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 suppressed 
 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 character of truth, but also in that of ven- 
 geance. It had retreated before their defiance 
 of both its more imperative and more gentle at- 
 tempts during their progress, only to await them, 
 in retributive power, at the end. See that you 
 
TO THE UNBELIEVER 51 
 
 do not forget that circumstance of their experi- 
 ence, 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 
 countenance, to foresee you as exhibiting, one 
 day, another such spectacle ; and will limit my 
 imagination to represent you as in a situation 
 less appalling, but very mournful. Let it be sup- 
 posed that you live on, constant to your present 
 system, and considerably successful in your en- 
 deavour to make the best of the world on your 
 own plan, till you attain an advanced 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, in- 
 duced perhaps by the hope of conveying an in- 
 fluence to the minds of some youthful friends, 
 adverting briefly and unostentatiously to his past 
 life, as a religious course ; recalling what he re- 
 gards as the most sensible commencement of the 
 decisive operation of religion on his mind, when 
 the conviction of its truth and necessity became 
 his reigning principle ; then, noting some of the 
 effects which have evinced, in their succession, 
 
52 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 the progress of its efficacy, both in the power of 
 its dominion, and in the creation of happiness ; 
 and finally, expressing with emphasis his delight 
 and gratitude, that now, in the cold evening shade 
 of life, this heavenly light shines still brighter, as 
 intermingling with those rays which are comiDg 
 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 
 of 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 comparison. 
 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 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 prospects of youth ? What 
 will you think of a system which forbids thought- 
 fulness 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 
 
TO THE UNBELIEVER. 53 
 
 transact, or of amusements incongruous with the 
 character of that season, and in which the anti- 
 quated performer appears like a man dancing 
 and jesting to the place of execution? You 
 shrink at the idea of being placed in such a con- 
 trast. I do not say to you, Embrace then, with- 
 out 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-ex- 
 amination 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 religion in the soul. If 
 tempted at any time to its unrestrained indul- 
 gence, 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 efforts to 
 reassure yourself that the man so contrasted with 
 you is but a deluded fool, will do little to disperse 
 the gloom settling and thickening on your spirit. 
 
54 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED TO YOUNG PERSONS 
 ON THE DUTY AND ADVANTAGES OF EARLY PIETY, 
 AND ON THE FATAL DANGER OF PROCRASTINATION 
 AND OF NEGLECTING THE MOMENTOUS CONCERNS OF 
 RELIGION IN YOUTH. 
 
 BUT now let us turn our thoughts to conjec- 
 ture the kind of reception which this good 
 hook may have found with persons of several class- 
 es greatly different 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 attention 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 
 happened to more than a few gay young persons, 
 of minds not uncultivated, not left entirely unin- 
 
CONSIDERATIONS, ETC. 55 
 
 structed 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 delicate 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 picturing an example of 
 many that there have been of the same kind, 
 when we imagine we see the young person hast- 
 ily laying down the volume, with a look of dis- 
 appointment and distaste, expressive of the sen- 
 timent, That is no book for me. To glance 
 over the title-page was quite disgust enough for 
 so frivolous a spirit to endure. In another in- 
 stance, we seem to see the young person inspec- 
 ting the book for a few moments, in an unfixed, 
 heedless manner, plainly indicating it would soon 
 be closed ; presently throwing it aside, as worth 
 no further attention : then fortunately detecting, 
 where it had slidden in among better 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 expec- 
 tation of meeting some gay associates, or of go- 
 insf to some amusement ; when it detained the 
 
56 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 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 
 mortification 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 acquaintance 
 with one of a more thoughtful character, and 
 might happen to find the latter reading, or ap- 
 parently having just read, the book in question; 
 and might betray some marks of sincere wonder 
 at so strange a taste ; internally saying, If i" 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 may have been facts answering 
 to these conjectural descriptions ; and we might, 
 with equal probability, diversify the representa- 
 tion into many other particular forms. Where 
 and what are the persons now, who were the re- 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 57 
 
 ality 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 bene- 
 volent vigilance had perceived this refusal to con- 
 verse an hour, or a moment, with a book solici- 
 ting 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 circumstance of dis- 
 like 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 persua- 
 ded, 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 
 possession of a share of good sense, and as ad- 
 mitting 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 
 
58 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 urge a more peremptory claim than the ques- 
 tions, What manner of being it is that you 
 possess, to what end you possess it, and how it 
 should be occupied, in order to the attain- 
 ment of that end ? Ts your own nature a thing 
 of such little account with you, that you are 
 quite satisfied with the mere fact of its being 
 an existence ; and that you have no doubt whe- 
 ther you may give away all its faculties, without 
 care or accountableness, 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 inter- 
 est, confined to a span of existence, and liable 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 cap- 
 abilities 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 be- 
 lieve any such thing ? What ! while I see the 
 whole vigour of your being, animal and mental, 
 at some times dissipated in levity, spirted off in 
 effusions of mirth ; or, at other times, consumed 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 59 
 
 in earnest protracted assiduity to accomplish 
 some contrivance for personal display, some 
 little feat of competition, 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 an- 
 nihilate? 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 ad- 
 mit these things to coalesce, and that you hap- 
 pen to be that creature ? Or do you escape all 
 sense of inconsistency and shame, through mere 
 thoughtlessness, which prevents your being re- 
 minded of that truth which you say you believe? 
 Mere thoughtlessness ! and how is that pos- 
 sible ? How is it possible to believe what you 
 affirm that you do, and not often feel a solemn 
 influence coming over your mind, and banishing, 
 for at least a little while, all trifling moods and 
 interests ? Assured 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 conviction, fixed and abid- 
 ing within you, should abide there alone, dis- 
 connected 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 combined there 
 
00 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 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 admitting that you stand in a solemn relation 
 to the Almighty; that your present state of ex- 
 istence 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 world; that its interests, therefore, 
 and all interests which respect this world exclu- 
 sively, are infinitely insignificant in comparison 
 with those of the spirit ; that you are every mo- 
 ment in progress toward the experience of a hap- 
 piness or misery of incalculable magnitude ; and 
 that this short and uncertain life is the season for 
 maturing the dispositions and habits to a state 
 which will consign you to the one or the other, 
 if the declarations of God be true. Can you at- 
 tempt to deny, or pretend to doubt, that all this 
 is included in the fact of your possessing a ration- 
 al spirit, destined to endless existence, and most 
 justly required to obey the commands of your 
 Creator ? But if this be true, you cannot exer- 
 cise your judgment, and listen to your conscience 
 for one hour, without plainly seeing what is your 
 highest interest, and most imperious duty. No- 
 thing in the world, nothing in all truth, can press 
 

 TO YOUNG PERSONS. 61 
 
 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 as- 
 sertion 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 your- 
 self, if you will then act as if the very contrary 
 were the truth I Suppose that (in such a spon- 
 taneous escape of thoughts in words, as sometimes 
 happens to a person musing in the security of 
 solitude) the prevailing disposition of your mind 
 were to utter itself involuntarily 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 remorse, or 
 fear, for the present, and shall do so — I do not 
 know, nor much care, how long." Supposing 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 
 import, and be almost surprised into the question 
 — " Who was saying that? Was it I? How 
 
62 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 strangely it would have sounded, if any one had 
 been within hearing !" If any one had been with- 
 in hearing ! And could you forget that there is 
 One who perfectly knows that internal disposi- 
 tion, of which expressions like these might be the 
 genuine utterance? 
 
 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 your- 
 self: that, whatever imperfections there are for 
 you to condemn and regret, you yet can feel a de- 
 liberate complacency, a complacency of reflection 
 and conscience, in the prevailing habit and pur- 
 pose of your mind. What is it worth, that a var- 
 iety 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 some- 
 thing to grieve you? Now, I wish it were pos- 
 sible to induce you to turn upon yourself one re- 
 solute, patient, impartial inspection. Look with 
 the intentness with which you would gaze on an 
 emblematical picture, in whose signs you could 
 believe your destiny to be figured out, — look on 
 the being, formed for an endless futurity, but en- 
 grossed by the interests of a day; appointed after 
 a short term to pass into another world, but re- 
 pelling all thoughts and monitions of it; capable 
 of an elevated and perpetual felicity, but sunk and 
 expended in transient pleasures and precarious 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 63 
 
 hopes; invited to communion with the Father of 
 Spirits, but turning away with indifference or 
 aversion, to seek all that it wants, for affection 
 and assistance, in the intercourse of associates 
 who are equally careless of his favour; and sum- 
 moned to adopt a wise and constant discipline, 
 to make sure of its true welfare in time and eter- 
 nity, but surrendering the formation of its char- 
 acter, and the direction of its course, to whatever 
 may happen to obtain the ascendancy, to casual 
 impressions, ill-chosen friends, or the prevailing 
 spirit and habits of the world. Behold this spec- 
 tacle 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 youthful vivacity in which you spring to 
 catch the passing pleasures, and call them happi- 
 ness, one primary requisite 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 ac- 
 cusing voice from within, telling you there is 
 something fatally wrong there. 
 
 You are reluctant to give any attention to re- 
 ligion, 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 sub- 
 ject? — preferring, in effect, that this shade, if it 
 
64 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 must come some time, should wait to bring addi- 
 tional 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 ex- 
 pects to become ! I will repel, he practically says, 
 all invasion of a grave subject from this my sea- 
 son of animation and delight, at the cost of hav- 
 ing 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 sea- 
 son of energy and enjoyment be kept clear, never 
 mind what I may be accumulating to bring sad- 
 ness on my spirit in thai stage where I shall need 
 every consolation. 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 re- 
 ligion. But will you not take the trouble to con- 
 sider what religion is, and in what manner it con- 
 cerns you? It is not a thing which your Crea- 
 tor imposes on you by a mere arbitrary appoint- 
 ment ; 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 corresponds to your nature, 
 that the possession of it is vital, and its rejection 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 65 
 
 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 communication 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, ade- 
 quately 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 to final extinction a few 
 years hence ; but would you have it be immor- 
 tal, and yet estranged from what must naturally 
 concern it as 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 in- 
 here in it, after all bodily diseases have ceased 
 in death. But then there is the plainest neces- 
 sity that some grand operation 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 re- 
 
 E 
 
66 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 deemed : now, this great process in the soul is 
 religion. Thus you may see that there can be 
 no grosser misapprehension than that which has 
 sometimes prompted the impious wish, that God 
 had not made religion necessary by enjoining it; 
 for that, but for this extrinsic necessity, this ne- 
 cessity of mere obligation to his authority, reli- 
 gion might have been neglected, and the neglec- 
 ter have fared never the worse. But you plead, 
 that whatever may be your conviction, and ought 
 to be your feeling, you cannot help regarding 
 religion as an austere and a gloomy concern; that 
 you have at times wished the case were other- 
 wise : 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 atten- 
 tion. You will take every precaution to avoid 
 being left alone with a person, however estim- 
 able and kind, from whom you are apprehensive 
 of receiving any admonition respecting it. Per- 
 haps even the sight of a book, familiarly known 
 to be (as this of the Eise and Progress of Reli- 
 gion) an earnest pointed inculcation of it, is like 
 glancing at the picture of a skeleton. The sub- 
 ject might become quite a grievance of your life, 
 — even this subject which represents to you how 
 to be happy for ever ! — did not your health, 
 your elastic spirits, your companions, your di- 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 67 
 
 versions, defend you so well against its frequent 
 or prolonged annoyance. But sometimes, per- 
 haps, an interval does occur, when it visits you 
 in such a character of authority, that your re- 
 sistance 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 alter- 
 native — to yield such submission, or incur such 
 consequences ! Is it not hard that I should be 
 required to surrender all the delights which are 
 the privilege of my age, to repress my vivacity, 
 to forsake my gay society, abandon my amuse- 
 ments, 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 a- 
 round me, toward another and unseen world of 
 which I know nothing ; to toil through severe 
 and never-ceasing exercises, called discipline; 
 to exhaust my 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 ; 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? 
 
68 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 Now, even were it admitted that all this is a 
 true representation of religion, that all this is its 
 requirement, the friend who is urging it upon 
 you might still maintain his argument. The 
 question, he would say, what cost we should he 
 willing to hear in a process, is to be determined, 
 if wisdom be the judge, by an estimate of the 
 result. The greatest temporary 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 endow- 
 ment of reason be worth, in practical applica- 
 tion, 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 representa- 
 tion, unqualified, is no just account of the de- 
 mands of religion. And beware of allowing 
 yourself in the disingenuousness of exaggerating 
 the hardship, in order to extenuate to your con- 
 science, or to vindicate against your friendly 
 admonisher, your neglect of the duty. 
 
 At the same time it is true, and must be un- 
 equivocally avowed, that religion, effectually pro- 
 secuted, does involve great labours, a discipline 
 often severe, and therefore many painful experi- 
 ences. It must include much that is mortifying 
 to natural inclinations. How should it be other- 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 69 
 
 wise 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 felicity ? If the natu- 
 ral condition of the mind be uncongenial with 
 what is divine and heavenly, its affections unat- 
 tempered to live and delight in that element 
 which is the vitality of the happiness of the be- 
 ings whom, alone and exclusively, the revelation 
 from God, and even your own reason, authorise 
 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 dread- 
 fully wrong, that it is not strange the agency for 
 transforming it should inflict pain in the salu- 
 tary process. That it should work with some 
 expedients of bitterness, keenness, and fire, is 
 quite in analogy with the operations necessary 
 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 instantaneously set the moral nature right, 
 causing the spirit to rise up suddenly in the 
 delightful consciousness that not a particle of 
 
70 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 evil remains, blessed with a triumph over the 
 disastrous fall, and assuming a ground still 
 higher than that which our first progenitor 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, un- 
 transformed, unreclaimed to God, into the future 
 state, where it must be miserable, than to under- 
 go whatever severity is indispensable in the pro- 
 cess of the religion which would prepare you for 
 a happy eternity ? Keflect, that you are every 
 day practically answering the question. Can 
 it be that you are answering it in the affir- 
 mative? Do I really see before me the ra- 
 tional being who in effect avows, — I cannot, will 
 not submit to such a discipline, though, in re- 
 fusing it and resisting it, I renounce an infinite 
 and eternal good, and consign myself to perdi- 
 tion? 
 
 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 thoughtless or unknown, than the strain 
 in which some have indulged in the recommen- 
 dation of it, as if it were all facility and enjoy- 
 ment. You have possibly heard or read grace- 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 71 
 
 fill periods of descant on the subject, represent- 
 ing to young people especially, that their unso- 
 phisticated 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 mat- 
 ter of the utmost ease for them, for such as you, 
 to enter on the happiness of the religious life. 
 Some little obstruction surmounted, one light 
 spring made, and you regain the walks of Eden ! 
 Did you believe it ? If you did, what unaccount- 
 able caprice, what pure wantonness 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 
 nevertheless prove obstinately repugnant to the 
 union ? Did you not think, Why then this aver- 
 sion 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 declamation 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 committed an error in underrating, 
 or keeping nearly out of view, the austere cha- 
 
72 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 racteristics 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 trans- 
 formation through which it had become so. 
 They have therefore made a representation, illu- 
 minated 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 perverted, sinful, tempted being, to be 
 humbled and reclaimed, taught many mortifying 
 lessons, disciplined through a series of many 
 corrections, reproved, restrained, and incited, 
 and thus conducted onward, in advancing pre- 
 paration for the happiness of another world, 
 must be the inflictor 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 depraved nature which religion is 
 designed and indispensable to redeem. 
 
 So much for the darker side. But now, on 
 the other hand, you can surely conceive, as com- 
 patible 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 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 73 
 
 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 ob- 
 ject, 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 misjudging 
 its character, and the service it has to offer you. 
 For you can comprehend that there is attain- 
 able, through the efficacy of religion, something 
 far better than all you can hope ever to enjoy 
 under the unhallowed 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 Being 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 commu- 
 nication with him concerning all your interests, 
 and with a consciousness that you are in activity 
 
74 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 for a master who will confer an infinite reward. 
 Think whether it would not be happy to 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 pollutions. 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 ac- 
 countable 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 assurance 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 ultimate hap- 
 piness. Think also of enjoying the conscious- 
 ness 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 YOUNG PERSONS. /O 
 
 to ensure a fine setting sun upon the last. Say- 
 honestly, whether all this be not something bet- 
 ter than any scheme of life which you have in- 
 dulged your imagination in shaping. Or, if you 
 sometimes surrender yourself to the fascinations 
 of romance and poetry, glowing over bright pic- 
 tures of felicity in which religion has no place, 
 make the experiment on your mind, in an hour 
 of cooler feeling, whether you dare pronounce 
 that it would be well to forego this happiness of 
 religion, by a preference of that exhibited in 
 these highly-coloured fictions, on the supposi- 
 tion 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 delectable fabrications out 
 of air would scorn your folly in expecting any 
 such realization. They would tell you, derid- 
 ing your simplicity, that the shows which en- 
 chant so much are the creation of their genius, 
 exerted to a much finer purpose than that 
 of representing an actual or even a possible 
 order of things; that they consciously and inten- 
 tionally abandon the ground on which plain 
 mortality must toil along through ordinary good 
 and evil, to range among imaginary elements, 
 obsequious to their will. Ludicrous and juvenile 
 indeed, they would say, must be the credulity of 
 any one setting out to find somewhere, as a fact, 
 
76 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 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 mate- 
 rials of this world, is actually in the possession 
 of any of its inhabitants — its youthful inhabi- 
 tants, I 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 feel- 
 ing no hope or attraction toward a better. 
 
 You do not deserve to know how to be happy, 
 even in this life, if you will not be persuaded to 
 make an honest effort of comparison between 
 any scheme that would promise to make you so 
 independently of religion, and the felicity which 
 would attend a religious 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 evi- 
 dently in the nature of that great cause, and in 
 the gracious design and promise of Him from 
 whom it descended, that it should confer ad- 
 vantages surpassing all others, you should be 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 77 
 
 willing to receive testimony as to fact from those 
 who have gone effectually into the experiment. 
 And you know, that they whom you verily be- 
 lieve to have made the most competent trial, 
 are the most decided, though not boastful, in 
 their declaration; 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 com- 
 panions attempt to ridicule them as its fools; 
 but do you observe whether their piety conduces 
 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 con- 
 tinual glitter of mirth, a dissipation of mind and 
 time among trifles, a dread of reflection and so- 
 litude, an eager pursuit of amusements ; in short, 
 a prevailing thoughtlessness, the chief suspen- 
 sions of which are for the study of matters of 
 appearance and fashion, the servile care of faith- 
 fully 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 
 
78 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 too high, to permit them any rivalry with the 
 votaries of such felicity. Certainly they feel a 
 dignity in their vocation, which denies them the 
 pleasure of being frivolous. But you will see 
 them often cheerful, and sometimes very ani- 
 mated. 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 emo- 
 tions are more internal and cordial ; they can 
 be cherished and abide within the heart, with a 
 prolonged, deep, vital glow; while those which 
 spring in the youthful minds devoid of reflection 
 and religion, seem to give no pleasure but in 
 being thrown off in volatile spirits at the sur- 
 face. Did you think that these disciples of reli- 
 gion 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 un- 
 derstand that it must be genuine. And there is 
 in it what may be called a principle of accumu- 
 lation ; it does not vanish in the enjoyment, but, 
 while passing as a sentiment, remains as a re- 
 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 79 
 
 flection, and grows into a store of complacent 
 consciousness, which the mind retains as a pos- 
 session 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 feelings 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 consumes entirely the material on 
 which it is lighted. So that the uncalculating 
 youth, who seized a transient pleasure last week 
 or yesterday, has no satisfaction 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 persons destitute of religion ; it represents 
 the condition of those who surrender their spi- 
 rits and life to vain and trifling interests, as 
 distinguished from the grosser evil which we 
 denominate vice. To insist that religion is bet- 
 ter than that, as productive of happiness in this 
 
SO CONSIDERATIOxN'S ADDRESSED 
 
 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 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 fidelity to his ob- 
 ject ; 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 
 luminary which shines through, and shines the 
 brighter for, the darkness. Not that this youth 
 makes any pretension to be a stoic philosopher, 
 serenely independent of the temporal good and 
 evil attending or awaiting his progress into life, 
 with no warm affections 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 inter- 
 ests, is, that he has enshrined his best affections 
 in that one thing which does not partake of mor- 
 tality and this world's uncertainty, and therefore 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 81 
 
 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 yesterday, to-day, and for ever." The 
 pious youth, then, is not abandoned, for his chief 
 enjoyment, to an endless fluctuation, alternating 
 between delight and disgust, eager to seize, and 
 wondering that the possession turns so soon to 
 nothing ; all the while neglecting, 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 
 recompence." 
 
 Be assured there are young persons who can 
 testify that this is their own experience of the 
 happiness of religion, in so considerable a degree 
 as to inspire an earnest wish to become more 
 completely possessed by its power, from the con- 
 viction 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 remember 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 
 
 F 
 
82 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 opinion of those, too many of their own age, who 
 can look on them with a propensity to ridicule, 
 or an affectation of piety. 
 
 And, tell me, what do you think of such 
 judges ? I conjecture you may have been under 
 no small influence of the opinions of some rather 
 like them, and would have deemed it a sad mis- 
 fortune to be discountenanced in their commu- 
 nity, or excluded from it by their aversion. But 
 at what rate do you really estimate their judg- 
 ment ? If they were to tell you plainly, that it 
 is needless and unseasonable in youth to consi- 
 der deeply of the best use of life, with a reference 
 to both its continuance and conclusion ; to be- 
 gin 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 ex- 
 pressly to tell you so, as their opinion, what 
 would you think their opinion worth ? And 
 should you not be ashamed of whatever 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 understand- 
 ing. But if they did not tell you so, and could 
 not deny that the contrary is true, what should 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 83 
 
 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 authori- 
 ties and examples ? 
 
 Perhaps your plea would be, that they are 
 nevertheless full of vivacity, pleasant and joyous ; 
 and that you must confess this captivates you so, 
 that you have not thought of any such grave af- 
 fair 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 instantly 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 disperse 
 into fragments by throwing in a twig or stone. 
 When they are at the highest pitch of their spir- 
 its, and apparently "shut up in measureless con- 
 tent," you have but just to mention the doom we 
 are all under to die; to name some young per- 
 son of their acquaintance who lately died, per- 
 haps in great distress 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 see what awkward ef- 
 forts they will have to make for its recovery. But, 
 
84 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 then, when you would plead, Why should you not 
 be allowed to have, free and unalloyed, the plea- 
 sure 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 partici- 
 pation 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 
 expostulate 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 your 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 another, 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 de- 
 liberately, that you know not why you should 
 not be quite at your ease in delaying, to some 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 85 
 
 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 earnest 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 im- 
 pertinence was uttered at a season when every 
 sentence ought to be the voice of wisdom. Say, 
 4 1 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 as 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 calcu- 
 lation, should suffice to warn you not to hazard 
 any thing of great moment on so menacing an 
 
8G CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 uncertainty. For, in all reason, when an infi- 
 nitely important interest is depending, a mere 
 possibility 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 unprepared takes all the value from even 
 the highest probability that there will be pro- 
 longed time to prepare : plainly because there is 
 no proportion between the fearfulness of such a 
 hazard, and the precariousness of such a depen- 
 dence. 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 
 accounted of value for you. 
 
 In minor concerns, there may be purposes not 
 improperly formed by a healthy young person, 
 which, though he could affect them now, he may 
 defer upon a calculation of protracted life ; be- 
 cause the degree of probability that his life will 
 be protracted may be equal to any degree of im- 
 portance 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 
 
TO YOUXG- PERSONS. 87 
 
 not to have accomplished it at all. He may be 
 content to hold, as thus dependent on the con- 
 tingency of lengthened life, a purpose, for ex- 
 ample, of visiting some foreign country, of seek- 
 ing a more agreeable locality to reside in, of 
 acquiring some particular branch of not absolute- 
 ly indispensable knowledge, and so of many other 
 things. The object may be of as much less 
 than the highest necessity to him, as he posses- 
 ses less than a certainty of long surviving his 
 youth. But when you acknowledge a concern 
 to be all-important, and that a failure in it 
 would be immeasureably disastrous, and avow a 
 purpose 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 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 may 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, 
 
88 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 perhaps you may have time allowed you for re- 
 deeming what you are now wilfully losing, and 
 for securing the safety of the great interest. 
 Perhaps may ! why, this plainly means that you 
 may not. But even if such an undeserved in- 
 dulgence 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 breathing 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 hav- 
 ing time for it long after the season of youth, and 
 can look undisturbed, undismayed, at the uncer- 
 tainty where you shall be when the time so reck- 
 oned upon shall arrive, it seems almost in vain to 
 reason with you any further — except entreating 
 you to turn one reflection on the state of that 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 89 
 
 mind with which it is in vain to reason to such a 
 purpose. Nevertheless, there are considerations 
 which might be enforced upon you, even though 
 you could have every degree of assurance, short 
 of absolute certainty, that a time far oif in pros- 
 spect will be yours in this life. — I am supposing 
 all the while, that you really do intend, or think 
 you:; intend, to apply yourself in earnest to the 
 supreme concern at a more advanced period of 
 your days. 
 
 It has been already enough insisted on, that 
 religion would make you far happier than any 
 thing you can enjoy in the neglect of it, during 
 youth itself, considered as one distinct stage ; but 
 I would now speak of it as connected with the 
 whole of life; allowing you to assume, if you will, 
 that your life is to reach the full term of the age 
 of man. 
 
 You say this protracted life must and shall 
 eventually be religious, confessing that otherwise 
 all would be wrong. What do you mean by its 
 being religious? If you have any just concep- 
 tion of the nature of religion, while you are re- 
 solving that your life shall some time assume that 
 character, you are resolving it shall then be ser- 
 vice to God. But now, what claims can there be 
 that he will have on any later portion of your life, 
 but has not on this earlier? Answer your con- 
 sience ivhy it should be a duty to serve him then, 
 
CONSIDER ATIOXS ADDRESSED 
 
 if it be no duty now. What is to bring you un- 
 der an obligation from which you are now ex- 
 empt? Is it that you will then be more depend- 
 ent on him, or subsist more entirely on his bounty, 
 or be more immediately and constantly in his 
 presence? Or is it that you will have more vi- 
 gour and liberty for his service ; that you will 
 have less to do with the cares and grievances of 
 the world ? Or is it that he has, in the com- 
 munications of his will, less expressly required 
 the services of youth, than of more advanced 
 age ; giving, by implication, a licence to youth- 
 ful spirits to forget him, and to take favours 
 most largely at his hands, on an understanding 
 that there is to be no present return ? No ; you 
 readily say that all this is absurdity. You do 
 not deny that there extends over your whole life 
 one grand obligation of service to God; only, 
 you have your own purposes to serve, and he 
 must wait ! He has given you, for cultivation, 
 a small tract of life, of time, on which you might 
 raise precious things for offerings to him ; when 
 you have exhausted its best faculties of produc- 
 tion to gratify yourself, you will resign to him 
 what it may be made to yield when reduced to 
 the condition of sterility and weeds. But sup- 
 posing you should become truly religious in the 
 latter part of life, you can even now understand, 
 that the very emphasis and intensity of the con- 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 91 
 
 victions of that new state of mind will be, to feel 
 how absolute was the duty, and how sublime 
 would have been the happiness, of devoting every 
 stage of life to the service of God. What, then, 
 will be the reflections with which conscience 
 will sting you, for having expended the most 
 animated part of it on the principle, that what 
 would be gained to him would be lost to you ? 
 
 Again, when you are making to yourself these 
 promises, that you certainly will some time in a 
 yet distant part of life, apply yourself seriously 
 to religion, you must mean that your will make 
 it an earnest concern that your spirit, by that 
 time advanced far toward the conclusion of its 
 sojourn on earth, may attain a prepared state 
 for removing to a superior and permanent scene 
 of its existence. This is what you mean, is it 
 not ? But then, how can it be, that you are 
 not struck with a sense of something flagrantly 
 absurd, in a plan of excluding from all but the 
 latter portion of life, an affair standing related 
 to so mighty a consequence ? Think of that 
 existence during endless ages, an existence to 
 commence in a condition determined for happi- 
 ness or misery, by the state of mind winch shall 
 have been formed in this introductory period. 
 And is this the single case in which all rules of 
 proportion may, without absurdity, and with im- 
 punity, be set aside ? You intend, I will sup- 
 
92 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 pose, to apply as much as a few years, some- 
 where yonder in the decline of life, to this great 
 business of preparation ; that is to say, as much 
 of the time within those years as will not be 
 inevitably consumed by worldly cares and atten- 
 tion to your infirmities. That is the measure 
 of time to be placed over against immense 
 futurity ? Behold those two, presented in such 
 a relation. Look at that ocean, and at the 
 competence of the time to prepare a vessel for 
 launching upon it. Set the poor fragments of 
 weeks and months in the years so appropriated 
 in .your determination, set them in your view, 
 against the ensuing millions of years or ages. 
 Have you no perception of a frightful dispropor- 
 tion? 
 
 If you attempt an evasion by saying, But 
 what would be the whole of this short life em- 
 ployed in preparation, as set against that futu- 
 rity? — the answer is that the whole term of life, 
 diminutive as it is, for a preparatory introduc- 
 tion to that stupendous sequel, is what our Cre- 
 ator has allotted to us, leaving to us no respon- 
 sibility that it is not longer, and is therefore a 
 space of time which his blessing can render 
 competent to the great purpose; but you are 
 presuming to take a different and exceedingly 
 diminished measure, on your own responsibility; 
 apportioning off, as an adequate space for the 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 93 
 
 preparation, a small section only of what he has 
 assigned for it. This is in effect, telling him, 
 that a far shorter time than the short one which 
 he has allotted for the purpose will be quite 
 enough for it ; and demanding of him that his 
 blessing shall be conferred on his arbitrary un- 
 sanctioned adjustment of you own, so as to make 
 a shorter time suffice for the object than that 
 which he has appointed and required to be de- 
 voted to its accomplishment. But turn your 
 thoughts upon your conduct, to reflect what an 
 act of reason you are performing when you say, 
 The whole of the time which God has assigned 
 for a preparation to enter happily on an eternal 
 existence is very short, and therefore a much 
 shorter is sufficient ! 
 
 And reflect what an estimate you are enter- 
 taining of both the nature and importance of 
 that preparation, while you can in ease or gay- 
 ety see one month and year after another passing 
 away, and anticipate that many more will pass, 
 without contributing to it one particle. What- 
 ever truth there may be to be learned, whatever 
 discipline to be applied, whatever 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 
 
94 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 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 pas- 
 sed in a lively career, and is gone to be mine no 
 more ; it might have effected for me, and left 
 me possessing something of inestimable value 
 toward what I own to be the supremely impor- 
 tant business of my life; but it has left me no- 
 thing. When I shall be constrained, at length, 
 to apply myself to the business with all my 
 might, I shall have to remember 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 determination, flung 
 with all its rich possibilities out of my existence; 
 that I shall have no benefit from it to all eter- 
 nity. 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 volun- 
 tary loss ; and whether, with the impoverished 
 resources of this late remainder of my time, I 
 
TO YOUXG PERSONS. 95 
 
 shall succeed or fail in the grand work, I shall 
 for ever have to remember, that I have not 
 thought it worth appropriating to it my most 
 valuable 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 de- 
 liberately 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, not to be in 
 that state during many years of this introduc- 
 tion. You lay a resolute hand on this invaluable 
 portion, to withhold and defend it against the 
 claims of that sovereign interest, practically pro- 
 nouncing it better, that the commencing and 
 animated stage of your existence should be alien- 
 ated 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 
 conformity with the solemnity of its character, 
 and applied to secure its happiness ; and if its 
 
96 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 importance would insist on more, I will resist 
 the encroachment. Eo authority of its require- 
 ment 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 
 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 futu- 
 rity is the transcendent one, that it is vast and 
 eternal, that it is critically depending, and that 
 it is your own. 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 
 resolution, 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 indepen- 
 dently of any direct thought of being so much 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 97 
 
 farther off from the latter end. And what is 
 this so valued peculiarity of youth ? Doubtless 
 it is the plenitude of life, the vigour and elasti- 
 city of body and mind, the quickness of appre- 
 hension, the liveliness of emotion, the energy of 
 impulse to experiment and daring. Now, con- 
 sider under what signal advantage, with respect 
 to the subsequent progress, religion would com- 
 mence its course in the strength of these ani- 
 mated forces. It would be like taking a steed 
 of fire for some noble enterprise, instead of one 
 already tamed with time and labour, or nearly 
 worn down. You would thus be borne onward 
 a great length before the vigour of nature begins 
 to remit, and would have acquired a principle of 
 impulsion to advance after that peculiar vigour 
 should have ceased. Your youth, at leaving 
 you, would seem to send its spirit forward with 
 you. The religious career thus commencing, 
 would have all the advantages 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 Pro- 
 gress of religion, that it should have the utmost 
 benefit from its Eise. 
 
 Again, consider that a person prosecuting, in 
 
 Q 
 
98 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 advanced life, a course which he deeply approves. 
 has a peculiar pleasure in recollecting it as hav- 
 ing 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 solitary 
 hour, seem to smile on him from the past, or 
 from heaven. The remembered conscientious 
 efforts 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 freshness, are still his, as having 
 been given to that which 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 life, finds himself by that very cause disse- 
 vered, as it were, from his youth, except for pain- 
 ful, self-reproachful reflection; who feels that its 
 associations, instead of conveying a genial warmth 
 to him along an uninterrupted train of piety to 
 
TO YOUNG PERSOXS. 99 
 
 the present time, are gone away in eonneetion 
 with what he regards as the dishonour and cala- 
 mity 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 some time, 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 something more, and worse, 
 than simply so much lost to that account. It is 
 not only that you are not religious 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 
 unknowing 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 jou in a kind of neutral state, impar- 
 tial to admit at length the conviction that now 
 it is high time, and easily convertible into a 
 Christian spirit? Consider that all this time 
 you are forming the habits which, when inveter- 
 
100 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 ately established, will either be invincibly upon 
 you through life, or require a mighty wrench to 
 emancipate you. This refusal to think, this 
 revolting from any attempt at self-examination, 
 this averting of your attention from serious books, 
 this declining 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 assistance, this eagerness to seize 
 each transitory pleasure, this preference of com- 
 panions who would like you the worse if they 
 thought you feared God or cared for your eternal 
 welfare; — these dispositions, prolonged in a suc- 
 cession of your willing acquiescences in them, 
 will grow into a settled constitution of your soul, 
 which will thus become its own inexorable 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 
 propensity to grow entire, so as to leave nothing 
 unpreoccupied in the mind, for any opposing 
 agent to take hold on, in order to counteract it; 
 as if it were instinctively 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 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 101 
 
 coalition, as shall leave none of them free to 
 desert at the voice of these summon ers. 
 
 And if you would reflect, you would be sen- 
 sible that, in effect, you ivish the case to be just 
 so. Do not practise any dissimulation with 
 yourself on the subject. In making the resolu- 
 tion that some time (and now, honestly, is not 
 that a time willingly regarded as far off?) that 
 some time you will apply yourself 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 command 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 wishing, then, in effect, that your affec- 
 tions and tastes may be entirely in harmony with 
 a system of life devoid of religion, that your judg- 
 ment 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 9 
 
102 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 which will fix your mind in a confirmed antipa- 
 thy to religion. You are intending to enter at 
 last on consecrated ground and yet are surren- 
 dering yourself to a power, wilich 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 deliber- 
 ately choose a track in which you can calculate 
 how each downward step goes in aggravation 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 compara- 
 tively gentle 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 in- 
 dulgence in this descent, is so much that I shall 
 find to have been gained against me by the* diffi- 
 culty on yonder steep. 
 
 It may be easy for you to have credit with 
 yourself in denying, in a light inconsiderate wa} r , 
 that you are actually adopting a plan of such 
 monstrous absurdity. You will say, that you 
 are far from being conscious of any wish to ag- 
 gravate the future difficulty of applying your 
 mind in good earnest to religion. But this is 
 
 
TO IOTOs'G PERSONS. 103 
 
 an evasion, of the thoughtlessness or disingenu- 
 ousness 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 necessarily involved in it. And 
 when your plan is that of spending an indefinite, 
 but large portion of your life exempt from reli- 
 gion, you necessarily wish to have the unalloyed 
 benefit of your privilege. (But what terms I am 
 using !) That clear advantage you cannot have, 
 if invaded by convictions, if harassed by consci- 
 ence, if kept in awe of the invisible Observer, if 
 lightened upon by intimations 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 de- 
 fiance occasionally, as will constitute, when fully 
 confirmed, a most fatal aversion and unadapted- 
 ness to that transfer of your thoughts and affec- 
 tions to religion, on Avhich you are presuming as 
 the ultimate resource. 
 
 And it is probable that, if you had self-obser- 
 vation enough, you might perceive this process 
 toward a confirmed state is going on. Have 
 you no consciousness, that the last two or three 
 vears of vour neglect of religion have rendered 
 
104 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 your disinclination to it more positive ? May 
 there not be a more sensible 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 re- 
 garded with a pointed sentiment of dislike, almost 
 of hostility, as against an ungracious intruder, 
 come, like 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 per- 
 haps, as a reward — an advantage, do you deem 
 it ? — of this boldness you are now seldomer in- 
 commoded 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 abso- 
 lutely will proceed on this plan, of retaining a 
 purpose in favour of religion, but deferring it to 
 some future distant time, I wish you would be 
 
TO YOUtfG PERSOXS. 105 
 
 induced to keep yourself apprised of its effect in 
 you, by making now and then an experiment, in 
 the way of test, on the temper of your mind. 
 Will you be advised to take occasionally some 
 very serious and cogent books 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 per- 
 fect freedom to remain for a while in this retire- 
 ment, 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 opportuni- 
 ties, and see whether the indisposition be not in- 
 creased rather than diminished. And if the fact 
 be so, what a melancholy phenomenon — a little 
 dependent spirit voluntarily receding from its 
 beneficent 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 
 
106 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 some remembered example 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 approximation 
 toward it ; and see whether, under these appli- 
 cations, 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 confidence, that, after you shall have 
 gone on many years thus confirming the es- 
 trangement 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 religi- 
 ous 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, never- 
 theless, that am to be religious, and therefore to 
 cherish such thoughts and emotions, in a season 
 yet to come. If you perceive yourself carefully 
 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, how- 
 ever, to entertain and welcome that religion 
 which would be there, at this time, enforced on 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 107 
 
 me with such powerful admonition. When 
 you are entering a gay thoughtless party, to 
 mingle in such a hilarity as any visitings of reli- 
 gious reflection would quell, say to yourself, 
 That very thing which would freeze this ani- 
 mation 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 taken in vain, say, I am 
 training myself here, through familiarity with 
 irreligion, to give my utmost reverence and af- 
 fection to that of which I am thus abetting the 
 scorn and profanation. If you are projecting 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 en- 
 grossment by a worldly project, then I shall need 
 but one touch of conviction, but one recollection 
 
108 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 of my former vow, but one act of my will, to 
 throw my spirit free, and become religious en- 
 ough for death and for heaven. 
 
 I repeat to you, that by this course of pro- 
 crastination, 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 overspread the first large 
 division of your allotted tract of time, is contin- 
 ually extending its roots far forward, and will 
 scatter its seeds thickly over all the space be- 
 yond. Consider how well, even at your age, 
 you are informed of it as a truth, that whatever 
 entwines itself with the youthful feelings, main- 
 tains a strange tenacity, and seems to insinuate 
 into the vitality of the being. How important 
 to watch, lest what is thus combining with its 
 life, should contain a principle of moral death ! 
 Consider, that in this earlier period you are pe- 
 culiarly disposed to entertain social partialities, 
 are perhaps giving yourself to companionship 
 and friendships, or contracting more intimate 
 relations, which must have an important influ- 
 ence on the growing formation of your mind in- 
 to its decided character, and on the consequent 
 tenor of your life. Now, when this social attrac- 
 tion combines several parties destitute of reli- 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. 109 
 
 gion, 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 can- 
 not 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 accomplishment. 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 design, not by any express act 
 of renouncement, but insensibly, in the gradual 
 hardening of their consciences, 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 kind of sin. 
 Many of them, however, are perhaps still re- 
 taining the purpose, inert and buried under an 
 accumulation of repressive habits ; like a seed 
 artificially kept torpid, in order that it may be 
 
110 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 quickened into germination at a preferable time. 
 The consciousness that they are mortal, and 
 must be forced at last out of all that now occu- 
 pies 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 expect, if you 
 should live to see them forward a few years fur- 
 ther — do you expect to see them withdrawing 
 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 ? Per- 
 haps you have allowed yourselves to imagine 
 that you, after having made a considerable pro- 
 gress in years, shall become, at every advance, 
 proportionally more and more sensible of the 
 shortening of life, and shall necessarily behold 
 nearer the visage of death, presented through a 
 clearer medium, and with enlarging and more 
 denned features. How can it, you may have 
 said, be otherwise, in the exercise of mere com- 
 mon 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 
 
TO YOUNG PERSONS. Ill 
 
 see persons with whose names you and your 
 companions, with a tacit pleasure of contrast in 
 your favour, couple the epithet " old," still as 
 heedlessly and confidently as yourselves, reckon- 
 ing on time enough yet, to continue deferring 
 the grand business, without peril of its being left 
 undone. If their youthful " trust in their own 
 heart," that they would ultimately apply them- 
 selves to the indispensable business, fixed that 
 determination on about some given point or pe- 
 riod 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 com- 
 mencing 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 imposition ; and all this 
 without a single reflection, that you are putting 
 yourself in the train of the same delusion. How 
 can they act so, you say, when I feel so certain 
 of the justness of my determination to act other- 
 
112 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 wise, 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 sea- 
 son," will help you to indulge a fallacious secu- 
 rity, while every season for accomplishing it is 
 passing away. Through one period of your time 
 after another, it will appear to you infallibly 
 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 ma- 
 lign imitation, by infernal art, of the star which 
 the sages followed to find the Saviour of the 
 world, will probably lead you on, still confiding 
 that it must stand arrested at the spot where 
 you shall accept the grace of that Eedeemer, 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 
 protracted life. It has been an attempt to repre- 
 sent to you that even if you might be allowed to 
 assume a very strong probability, little short of 
 certainty, of reaching the full term of human 
 
TO YOUXG PERSOXS. 113 
 
 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 wic- 
 ked, 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 immediately following stage. 
 
 Now will you, my young friend, lay such con- 
 siderations to heart ; or will you rather have it 
 to remember, perhaps when all too late, that 
 they were pressed upon you in vain ? 
 
114 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED TO MEN OF THE WORLD 
 ON THE DANGER OF A TOO EXCLUSIVE DEVOTEDNESS 
 TO BUSINESS AND OTHER WORLDLY PURSUITS TO 
 THE NEGLECT OF THE GREAT AND PARAMOUNT IN- 
 TERESTS OF RELIGION. 
 
 THE preceding expostulation, conceived as 
 what might have been addressed to some 
 one of the many young persons who may, in 
 various times and places, have had their atten- 
 tion 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 exemplifying, 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 
 
CONSIDERATIONS, ETC. 115 
 
 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 excit- 
 ed at the sight, or transient inspection, or per- 
 usal 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 appropriate admonitions, which it had been 
 well if there had been any intelligent and persua- 
 sive friend opportunely 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 must be attracted, more 
 or less, to a work which is in still widening cir- 
 culation! 
 
 Foregoing, then, the design of specifying seve- 
 ral other discriminated examples, we will pro- 
 tract this discourse only a little further, by sup- 
 posing one more instance ; an example, however, 
 of a character unhappily far too generally pre- 
 valent 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 designation; 
 for we do not suppose him an abandoned profli- 
 gate, trampling and spurning the most obvious 
 rules of social morality; nor a scoffer at religion; 
 
116 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 nor a scorner, in a virulent spirit, of pious men ; 
 but devoted to this world, idolizing it in his af- 
 fections, exerting all his active energy in its pur- 
 suits, surrendering his whole being to mingle 
 with its interests and be conformed to its tem- 
 per; and therefore habitually forgetting the 
 other world, and all the grand economy of 
 truths, overtures, means, preparations, and cares 
 relating to it. He might have been in youth 
 just the same kind of person as the one expostu- 
 lated with in the preceding pages: we are sup- 
 posing him past that age, and all that belongs 
 peculiarly 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 thousand copies have been diffused 
 among all orders of society, and have obtained, 
 through choice or accident, with approbation or 
 under sufferance, a position in almost so many 
 abodes, our fancy has a warrant to figure an in- 
 definite 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 re- 
 
TO MEX OF THE WORLD. 117 
 
 ligious 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 sud- 
 den reflection, that for ten, 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 recollec- 
 tion, 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 move- 
 ments 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 per- 
 haps 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 Sun- 
 day ought to be, in some degree, unlike his oth- 
 er days, and a small portion of it given to seri- 
 ous reading; 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 disquiet- 
 ed consciousness, or a suspicion that his spirit 
 
118 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 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 
 feeling, he internally said, { The Progress of Re- 
 ligion — 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 involuntary and transitory excitements of 
 a recognition of that great interest, are not, 
 however, incompatible with a prevailing decided 
 neglect and alienation; but, in truth, the conjec- 
 tures may justly fall into a less charitable train. 
 We 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 ad- 
 mitting a slight reflection of relf-rebuke. But 
 it is not less likely to have happened, that a 
 man of this character, on perceiving such a cir- 
 cumstance, has signified displeasure at this ex- 
 pedient for rendering the happy young creatures 
 prematurely grave and melancholy, extinguish- 
 ing, he said, their delightful vivacity, (which 
 would soon enough be repressed by the cares and 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 119 
 
 troubles of life,) by unseasonable apprehensions 
 about the welfare of their souls. It is no im- 
 probable 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 high pretensions to religion; and that 
 he said, with irritation and a frown, I think I 
 may as well let this affair of religion alone, till 
 I see more integrity in those who profess to be 
 so deep in it. The main matter of duty is, to 
 be upright in our transactions; and, thank God, 
 I am that without any canting pretensions to 
 saintship. Another man of this description may 
 have accidentally looked into the book a little 
 while, and then laid it aside, evading all personal 
 application with the thoughtless sentiment, That 
 is all very well for persons whose situation allows 
 them to give themselves up to retirement and 
 thinking; but men like me have far too much to 
 do with the practical business of life to have lei- 
 sure for attending to the subject. ' The book 
 may have obtruded itself on the notice of a man 
 deliberating whether to add a new worldly un- 
 dertaking to those he was involved in already, 
 an undertaking not necessary, but calculated to 
 make a little more of the world his own. And 
 might it not be supposed that such a monitory 
 intervention might contribute to suspend the 
 
120 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 affirmative decision, by force of the question, 
 whether this concern, of religion, did not de- 
 mand to take precedence of every other new un- 
 dertaking .? No: the question struck but fee- 
 bly on his mind ; the suggestion was easily 
 cleared away from interference with his debat- 
 ing thoughts ; religion could be attended to at 
 any time indifferently ; whereas, now or never 
 was the time for the project which was warm- 
 ing his desires. The book was thrown by, and 
 the subject vanished. 
 
 It is familiar to observation, that men of the 
 world have an arrogant estimate of worldly wis- 
 dom, though the sphere of its objects be so li- 
 mited, and the term of its employment and pro- 
 fit so short. "Never did the adepts in abstract 
 philosophy or in science indulge a prouder con- 
 sciousness in virtue of living and reigning in the 
 intellectual world, than these men do on the 
 strength of being shrewd and efficient in the 
 judgment and conduct of affairs. Suppose, 
 then, one of them, on returning from a place of 
 resort and competition, where he has excelled 
 in the discussion or transaction of some of these 
 affairs, to have been led by any chance to open 
 such a book, and to have glanced over a few 
 sentences or paragraphs. Pie probably did not 
 waste even his contempt in more tban a few 
 brief expressions to this effect : — These men, all 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 121 
 
 for religion, talk of the insignificance of what 
 they call earthly things, the vanity of the world, 
 the Christian's vocation to live above it, the 
 meanness of its concerns compared with their 
 nobler pursuits; and all the while they know 
 nothing about it. Too fantastic and feeble for 
 the vigorous activities of our department, let 
 them be indulged in their notion that they have 
 vastly superior employments in their own. It 
 were hard to deny them the pleasure of de- 
 claiming against that which they do not under 
 stand, and in which they would make a miser- 
 able figure in attempting to act a part. Ano- 
 ther man of the worldly character, in a less 
 supercilious temper, may be supposed to have 
 looked a little into the book with a feeling like 
 this : — One does wish one could manage to have 
 some commodious sort or share of religion that 
 would not cost much trouble, and would put one 
 in safety as to future consequences. But reli- 
 gion as described here, meets me as an inquisi- 
 tor and a tyrant. It would force a judicial 
 investigation through my whole soul, and that 
 only to expose, condemn, and affright me ; in- 
 sists on some strange revolution in my princi- 
 ples and feelings ; demands an unconditional, 
 unlimited submission, to a jurisdiction which 
 will leave nothing within me or without me, at 
 my own free disposal ; and, in short, insists on 
 
122 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 setting the main purposes of my life in a new 
 direction. This is not to be endured. If I 
 must at last, for safety's sake, submit on such 
 terms, let me enjoy my exemption as long as I 
 can or dare. 
 
 But a man of the world may be a formalist : 
 maythinkthat no such religion can everhe neces- 
 sary, and that he has a sufficient one in his re- 
 gular performance of an order of mere external 
 observances. Somewhere, no doubt, there is a 
 copy of the book in question which such a man 
 has inspected, with eyes now perhaps closed for 
 ever ; and we can figure the aspect (though the 
 pages do not reflect the image) of alternate dis- 
 dain and indignation at what he pronounced to 
 be rank enthusiasm, with self-congratulation on 
 knowing a far easier method of satisfying the 
 requirements of his Creator. 
 
 We might go on indefinitely recounting, in 
 probable conjecture, the modes in which the 
 worldly spirit has been affected at coming in 
 contact with this vehicle of serious admonition. 
 And what a manifestation would be given of the 
 nature of that spirit, if, from unknown times 
 and places, one twentieth part would be recalled 
 of the instances in which its quality has been 
 the most remarkably betrayed under such a 
 test ? We will describe but one example more. 
 It is not to be doubted that this production of 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 123 
 
 pious zeal has at some time fallen in the way of 
 a person who had continued faithfully devoted 
 to the world quite to old age. Perhaps it met 
 his notice at the time when he was just up- 
 on making the utmost exertion of his declin- 
 ing strength, and with an eagerness equal to any 
 passion of his youth, to accomplish the conclud- 
 ing, the crowning part of a long-wrought pro- 
 ject, for bringing within his grasp a material 
 acquisition of emolument or distinction; in other 
 words, for gaining more possessions against the 
 day of losing them, and more decorations against 
 the day of putting them off. And perhaps he 
 did not plainly say, Religion, with all that de- 
 pends on it, must take its chance ; I never yet 
 have been disposed to forego any thing for its 
 sake, nor am I now. But we may confidently 
 suppose him to liave said in effect, I must at all 
 events complete this affair in hand, whatever 
 become of any thing else. And who knows 
 but he was smitten with death before either the 
 momentous something else obtained his atten- 
 tion, or the project, for the sake of which he re- 
 fused it, was accomplished ? Or we may ima- 
 gine the occurrence happening to a man in a 
 more prostrate state of feeling, when a long- 
 prosecuted scheme had failed, too late in his 
 life for him to form a new one ; or about the 
 time that encreasing infirmity had constrained 
 
124 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 him to the dreaded task of making his will ; or 
 when he had recently seen his most trusty co- 
 operator, or his nearest relation of his own age, 
 or even the last of his children, sink into the 
 grave. And would it be too hard upon human 
 nature, or an uncharitable judgment of the tem- 
 per of a mind grown old in devotedness to the 
 world, to suppose that, even in circumstances 
 like these, the man still could not resolve on so 
 serious a thing as attention to religion ? No : 
 we can 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 
 darkening 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 commensurateness between 
 such a lengthened process, and his now shor- 
 tened life ; and that, through a lamentable per- 
 versity, 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 con- 
 
TO MEtf OF TIIE WORLD. 125 
 
 suming the short remainder of his life as he had 
 consumed all before. 
 
 -Now, in each of all these instances, an intel- 
 ligent 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 feel- 
 ing in the particular case. And a discerning 
 and skilful pleader in this good cause may 
 sometimes seize upon the peculiar mode of feel- 
 ing, in such a manner as to turn it to account, 
 availing himself of it to give his remonstrance 
 something of the point and appropriation of the 
 argumentum ad hominem. But we shall con- 
 tent ourselves 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 ef- 
 fort so directed, is not a little repressed by a 
 sentiment partaking of despondency. There is 
 no evading the thought, Why should words and 
 arguments and images of unseen things and ad- 
 jurations be expended on that man, on those 
 men ? They will continue the same. Why 
 should Religion, like Cassandra, waste her dic- 
 tates and premonitions on a hopeless determina- 
 tion 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 mis- 
 
126 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 siles 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 it- 
 self, 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 reli- 
 gion, cannot help feeling it nearly a forlorn at- 
 tempt to awaken any sense of that importance 
 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 settled insensibility to the things 
 which most vitally and profoundly concern you? 
 Have you really a power, and that power so com- 
 plete 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 tre- 
 mendous in existence? When mercy, in a ce- 
 lestial form approaches to apply to your soul the 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 127 
 
 redeeming principle without which it will perish, 
 can you turn it away, coolly saying, Another 
 time, perhaps — or perhaps never ? And in re- 
 fusing 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 religion, a grati- 
 fying 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, 
 attacked 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 representations in favour of that 
 from which you thus walk in 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 subterraneous thunder, and of the 
 ground heaving and rending under your feet. 
 But, at the same time, it is what may well cause 
 a Christian friend to be despondent of the effi- 
 cacy of expostulation. 
 
128 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 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, holi- 
 ness, conformity to the divine image — of heaven 
 and hell, of judgment and eternity. But these 
 are insignificant sounds, unless, when pronounc- 
 ed, they strike upon conceptions already in the 
 mind, which answer to their import — conceptions 
 which contain in them, so to speak, the ideal sub- 
 stance 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 fee- 
 ble 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 at all. Nay, might not men of the 
 world be found in such a condition of the intel- 
 lect, 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 perfectly formed in your understanding-— 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 129 
 
 distinct, palpable, and in full dimension. Let 
 the denominations be pronounced of divers kinds 
 and values of worldly property, of methods and 
 rules of transacting business, of the different 
 stations in society, with their respective relations 
 and circumstances, or of the materials and ac- 
 commodations for gratifying the senses ; let some 
 of these be named, and instantly the correspond- 
 ing ideas arise in the mind, substantial and dis- 
 tinct; so that the utterer of the designations 
 knows he can do with the auditor whatever de- 
 pends 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 glim- 
 mer on your apprehension ! It is as if words pro- 
 nounced 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 me- 
 chanism. A very young person may be frivo- 
 lous 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 
 
 i 
 
130 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 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 adhe- 
 sion 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 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-morrow 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 de- 
 termination to it as your general object, 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 pre- 
 serves a consistency of its special action through- 
 out all the detail of its objects; the manner in 
 which the predominant law operates with respect 
 to each, agreeing with its mode of operation in 
 all the others. Thus, you are men of the world 
 
TO MEK OF THE WORLD. 131 
 
 not only by one general sentiment of devoted- 
 ness to it, but in a systematic appropriation of 
 that sentiment to various and numberless parti- 
 culars. 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 
 uniformity 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 make light of infinitely 
 higher interests, should attempt 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 
 proceeding, 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 content- 
 ed and preferred association with men devoid of 
 
132 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 religion ; some of them from the disposition pro- 
 duced by the study and strife to make your way 
 upward in society; some of them from the prac- 
 tice of relieving the cares of business only by the 
 indulgences of pleasure ; and some of them, per- 
 haps, from a taste for appearing as men of fash- 
 ion. 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 liber- 
 ality of opinion in allowing, that it is right 
 enough there should be in the world a class of 
 earnest devoted religionists, as well as other va- 
 rieties 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 theirs. 
 
 So you are, on the whole, in high favour with 
 yourselves. You may not indeed be entirely 
 secure against occasional disturbances to your 
 self-satisfaction ; there may be moments when 
 
TO MEN" OF THE WORLD. 133 
 
 a suspicion arises from the dark depth within, 
 that all is not right ; when conscience, generally 
 still, gives some intimations, like the sighs of a 
 person beginning to recover from suspended ani- 
 mation ; when some glimpses of a greater eco- 
 nomy are admitted through narrow rents and 
 openings in the little system within which you 
 are immured. But you suffer no habitual an- 
 noyance 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 possessed, 
 he says, with your own good opinion, that any 
 serious examination, whether it be not a delu- 
 sive one, will appear to you a superfluous trou- 
 ble, and the exhortation to it officious and imper- 
 tinent. 
 
 But will you absolutely refuse such an exer- 
 cise of your reason? How can you have lived 
 so long without 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 sub- 
 ject that you shall choose. Now is an interval 
 which can be exempted from the indispensable 
 
134 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 demands of business, and, if you will it so, from 
 the allurements to dissipation. You may, you 
 can, this hour, recollect whether there be a sub- 
 ject of transcendent importance, which you have 
 never duly considered yet ; and you may choose 
 it, instead of another subject, for present consi- 
 deration. You cannot help seeing what that 
 subject is. It is Religion 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, the concern of your eter- 
 eternal interests, the relation you stand in to 
 another world, the peremptory requirement of 
 what you must do to be saved. What can ever, 
 through endless duration, be worth your consi- 
 dering, if this be not ? You know that religion, 
 unless it be a fable, has all this importance ; that 
 it has this importance to you, and that it has it 
 to you now, while this day, this hour, is passing. 
 In a matter of incomparably less magnitude, 
 (say it were a most critical 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 impor- 
 tunately 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, 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 135 
 
 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 depend- 
 ing on the judgment and activity which I may 
 exercise this day ? But here is the supreme in- 
 terest 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 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 yourself to force off its urgent application for 
 your immediate 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 impossible for you to 
 reflect, at this moment, what it is that you are 
 successfully doing ? Cannot you perceive, 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 re- 
 solve to inspect its nature ? Look at it, observe 
 its fatal operation just now going on ; and then 
 
136 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 say honestly, whether any thing can be of a 
 quality more execrable ? Do not say this is ex- 
 travagant language ; do not stay to mind the 
 language at all ; 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 salva- 
 tion. If it could be suddenly revealed to you in 
 full light, what an operation 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 now done ? Has the repelling principle, after 
 so many former successes, prevailed once now ; 
 so that the great subject which approached you y 
 appealed to you, solicited you, displayed smiles 
 of divine benignity, alternating with just me- 
 naces 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 amusements ? Then, 
 what have you accomplished — but to send an 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 137 
 
 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 withholds it from God, and a confirmed 
 power and facility 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 augment- 
 ed 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 be- 
 tray 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 bet- 
 ter 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 know- 
 ledge of you would show it foolish to entertain, 
 that you may be induced to employ, in the ex- 
 ercise of such reflection, this day and hour to 
 better purpose than any former one of your life. 
 Why should not this be the day of a determin- 
 ed seriousness 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 without a 
 
138 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 reason. And if the only reason be, that you 
 are reluctant, consider whether that reason, that 
 reluctance, will ever spontaneously cease. But 
 consider, too, whether that reluctance be not it- 
 self, 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 con- 
 tent to leave it unexamined and unreformed. 
 "Would that a superhuman power might stand in 
 your way just here, stop you at this point in 
 your course, and constrain you to reflect now ! 
 The hours, the day which you are just now en- 
 tering 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 men- 
 tal 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 re- 
 morse for your having sent away into the past, 
 a long succession of the portions of your time 
 charged with no such precious contents — thus 
 avenging itself on you for your prolonged rejec- 
 tion. 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 effectually arrest- 
 ed you? Would you, under this arrest, struggle 
 as to escape from an enemy, when the subject 
 will bring with it the evidence and the convic- 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 139 
 
 tion, that, though with an austere and accusa- 
 tory aspect, it is certainly come as a friend? 
 Admit it into your mind and time this once, 
 with all its solemnities, and even its reproaches. 
 And if, as a condition of doing so, you will in- 
 sist on retaining some precautionary resource 
 against being absolutely and irrecoverably sur- 
 rendered to it, you may be assured, (if you can 
 accept so melancholy a fact for consolation,) 
 that, in the strength of your corrupt nature, you 
 will not easily lose all power of reaction for de- 
 barring its entrance, when, at another time, it 
 shall present itself to you again. 
 
 There possibly are special circumstances of 
 the present time, of a nature to enforce this ex- 
 hortation. It may be, that one of you, worship- 
 pers of the world, has just experienced an ill 
 reward of his faithful devotion. Some grievous 
 disappointment, perhaps, some failure of a pro- 
 ject, some fall of your fortunes, some blast on 
 your hopes, has reduced you to a temporary dis- 
 gust 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. Row, 
 though 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 stag- 
 nant in a sullen and resentful mortification, 
 
140 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 waiting 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 
 religion, 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 disappoint- 
 ed, cheated, and wronged you, to avail yourself 
 of the recoil of your heart from it, in reinforce- 
 ment of the conviction, that it is time to " seek 
 a better country:" thus turning it into an im- 
 pulse 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 circumstance to co- 
 incide with the remonstrance which would awa- 
 ken 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 quar- 
 rel, how long since it ought to have taken place, 
 and how incomparably better you may do than 
 make up the breach. 
 
 Perhaps some of you have just witnessed, with 
 indignant vexation, one of the iniquitous partial- 
 ities of fortune, as you call it. A man whom 
 you know to be of worthless or detestable cha- 
 racter, has obtained, through apparent casualty, 
 
TO MEN OE THE WORLD. 141 
 
 or by means of craft, or corrupt interest, or even 
 by the most undisguised violation of right, some 
 remarkable advantage of enrichment or prece- 
 dence ; such a thing as you had coveted, but had 
 not presumed to hope for ; or possibly, 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 exclaim- 
 ed, 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, nevertheless, 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 object you have idolized 
 shall rather serve to any effect, even that of cor- 
 roding 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 exhi- 
 bit you in scorn as a slave, fretting indeed, but 
 impotent, 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 elsewhere" ? 
 
142 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 It may be, again, that one of you has lately 
 seen a rival and coeval 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 to- 
 ward what was approaching. You saw what was 
 the result of that choice which had been made by 
 you both, and to which he had remained constant 
 nearly to the moment when an irresistible power 
 interposed to send 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 exem- 
 plification of what the world will do for its friends, 
 in the case of one whom you had long known as 
 a believer in its promises, a zealot to its princi- 
 les and a staunch pursuer of its objects; but who, 
 in the closing scene, relented into shame and pe- 
 nitential sorrow, faintly mingled with hope in the 
 divine mercy which he implored. He declared 
 to you his overwhelming 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 decorum's 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 143 
 
 sake at least, you put on a grave and assenting 
 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 circumstances, should talk so ; but what he 
 says or feels has no appropriateness in its appli- 
 cation 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 
 yourself to these conclusions. A certain indis- 
 tinct dismay, at the least, invaded you, to the 
 effect of subduing 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 dis- 
 tinct act of judgment, and the resolution very de- 
 terminate. And what then? Have you since 
 deliberately judged all this to have been a vain 
 agitation of your spirit, a brief delirium, occa- 
 sioned 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 set- 
 tings of the sun, and the return of the accus- 
 
144 COKSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 tomed thoughts and employments, essentially 
 altered the merits of the case? Have these 
 caused what was truth and obligation and dan- 
 ger, to be such no longer? Has the mere pass- 
 ing 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 affecting your natural life, (for instance, 
 your state of health or disease, your exposure to 
 a peril, or security against it,) as something ex- 
 isting in the abstract— a reality, indeed, but 
 something quite separable from yourself. The 
 circumstance, too, that by the passing of the in- 
 tervening 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 pre- 
 paring to leave it ? Think of a rational be- 
 ing 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 dimi- 
 nutive impression against the moment when he 
 is to plunge into it! 
 
TO MEtf OF THE WORLD. 145 
 
 Should no circumstances nearly resembling 
 these have occurred within your recent experi- 
 ence, 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 image will arise to remind 
 you, that then and there, by such an event, such 
 a spectacle, such a voice, you were specially ad- 
 monished to consider your course. And an- 
 swer 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 re- 
 turn 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 you be afraid to go 
 back thither, what is it that this apprehension 
 tells you ? Do not limit the retrospect, as if you 
 had no concern with the occasions and causes 
 that once, long since, challenged your considera- 
 tion to the most important subject. Do not 
 yield to the deluded feeling, that all those, being 
 gone so far away, have perished from all connec- 
 tion 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 
 
146 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 responsibility. They are all coming after you, 
 however silently and unthought-of, and will be 
 with you in the great account. And if you 
 could be induced to make an effort, in any 
 thoughtful hour, to imagine with what a vivid- 
 ness of recognition and intensity of reproach, the 
 monitory occurrences of your past life will at 
 last present themselves to strike upon your con- 
 science, if they shall have been disregarded in 
 their time, and suffered to go useless into obliv- 
 ion as you have proceeded on, it might have the 
 effect of recalling them now, to combine in op- 
 eration with all the other things which summon 
 you to reflection. 
 
 When a religious observer sometimes has his 
 thoughts directed upon you, he is struck with 
 the idea, what a mighty assemblage of considera- 
 tions, that should irresistibly compel you to 
 thoughtfulness, you are insensible of. As, 
 when we extend our contemplations conjectu- 
 rally into the economy of existence which sur- 
 rounds us, it is suggested to thought, what un- 
 embodied intelligences, what communications, 
 what agencies, what elements perhaps, what pro- 
 cesses, there are on all sides, and many of them 
 relating to us, but of which the senses admit no 
 perception; so in the spiritual economy, that is, 
 the system of relations in which the immortal 
 mind stands involved, there are realities, there 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 147 
 
 are truths, of highest import, there are argu- 
 ments, warning circumstances, alternatives of 
 good and evil, most vitally relating to your wel- 
 fare but non-existent to your apprehension. The 
 very emanations of heaven, radiating downward 
 to where you dwell, are intercepted, 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 devoted 
 and enslaved to the world — Oh, why is it impos- 
 sible 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 enunciation of what, if it could 
 be received by them in its simple, unexaggerated 
 importance, would stop that one man's gay car- 
 eer, as if a great serpent had raised its head in 
 his path; would confound that other's calcula- 
 tion 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, 
 
148 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 and, amidst their surprise and terror, would ex- 
 cite an emotion of joy that they had been dis- 
 severed, before it was too late, from an object 
 that was carrying them down a rapid declina- 
 tion 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, 
 portents, 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 re- 
 mains undisturbed, — is sometimes a matter 
 of gloomy, indignant, and almost misanthropic 
 speculation. But in the season of better feel- 
 ing, the religious beholder is excited to a be- 
 nevolent impatience, a restless wish, that things 
 so near and important to you should take hold 
 upon you. Why cannot, he says, that which 
 comes between and renders those things, in- 
 trinsically of such awful force, actually power- 
 less, be destroyed or removed? If there be a 
 principle of repulsion, if there be a veil, if there 
 be a shield invisibly held by a demon's hand, let 
 it be annihilated, that the appropriate truth may 
 rush in with all its power. Let the thought of 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 149 
 
 the Almighty fulminate on the mind of that mor- 
 tal, who is living "without God in the world." 
 Let the idea of eternity overwhelm that spirit, 
 whose whole scheme of existence embraces but 
 a diminutive portion of time. Let the worth 
 and danger of the soul be instantly revealed to 
 that person, whose chief cares are engrossed with 
 the accommodation or adornment of the body. 
 Let the value of treasures in another world be 
 brought into sudden contrast with earthly wealth, 
 in the view of that worshipper of mammon. 
 Let the scene of the last judgment present itself 
 in a glare, to him whose conscience is in repose 
 on the delusive principles of the world's morality 
 and religion. Let an austere apparition, as from 
 the dead, accost him who is living as if life were 
 never to have an end. To him who is indiffer- 
 ent to the whole concern of salvation, let there 
 be an affecting display of what an extraordinary 
 appointment, of mingled justice and mercy, was 
 required to render it possible; and of what it 
 cost the saviour of the world. Let these things 
 strike into the souls of men of the world, and 
 they would awake in amazement at their pre- 
 vious condition, and continue long in sorrow for 
 its criminality and absurdity. And are these 
 still to be exactly the things for which they have 
 no sensibility or perception? And is it in the 
 immediate presence of these objects, constantly 
 
150 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 pressing for their attention, but unacknowledged 
 and unseen, that they are to occupy themselves 
 with every business, or entertain every trifle and 
 vanity, satisfied that nothing is greatly wrong, 
 assured that all is safe, or not even caring so 
 much as to think whether they be safe or not? 
 
 But, men of the world, it is possible you may 
 be provoked to assume the defensive, and deny 
 the justice of so strong a charge of irrationality 
 and guilt as we make, in applying to you this 
 denomination with these comments. But it is 
 not safe for you to do this with a thoughtless 
 confidence, without an exercise of reflection to 
 ascertain the real state of your mind and char- 
 acter. Be persuaded to make an effort to take 
 a true account of that state, as a simple matter 
 of fact. Of what, in all the world should you be 
 concerned to know the truth, if not of that inter- 
 nal condition which is forming your destiny for 
 hereafter? 
 
 Now, then, is it not true, is it not a fact, that 
 almost the whole system of the feelings and ac- 
 tivity of your mind is limited exclusively to this 
 world, so as to be practically much the same as 
 if you were unaware that your being has an am- 
 pler sphere of interests ? Observe what is the 
 extent of the range which your spirit takes. 
 Question it how far it goes forth, habitually, or 
 at any time. See and acknowledge to yourself, 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 151 
 
 what it is that is in sole possession of you, as if 
 you were made for nothing more. 
 
 Take a view of your thoughts. They are in 
 number incalculable, and they can go in all di- 
 rections, to a boundless extent; they might "wan- 
 der through eternity." Whither do they go, the 
 countless thousands of them, and on what do 
 they fix ? You may perceive that nearly all of 
 them stop within the circle of this world's con- 
 cerns. They start and move and traverse in- 
 cessantly, 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 contin- 
 ual activity of your thoughts is centred upon 
 an order of temporal interests ; 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 accom- 
 pany the acts of thought. See what it is that 
 most certainly awakes them at the slightest call; 
 that attracts, attaches, and absorbs them. Sup- 
 pose that, at very many times, fallen upon in- 
 
152 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 differently and without any selection of occa- 
 sions, the question were to be suddenly put and 
 ingenuously answered from consciousness 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 thousand 
 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? Is there 
 one of them, or any part of one of them, of 
 which no possible turn of worldly events would 
 be the disappointment ? Would any thing, that 
 should be the most 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 ma- 
 terial 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 degradation, from that 
 economy which holds the spirits sojourning on 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 153 
 
 earth connected with every thing higher in ex- 
 istence. From the system constituted, (as a 
 part of that economy,) for renovating, training, 
 and finally exalting them, you practically make 
 yourselves aliens and outcasts, rejecting its be- 
 nefits, and wishing you could be forgotten in its 
 jurisdiction. You are content that any other 
 fallen beings, rather than you, should be inclu- 
 ded in the dispensation of mercy through a Me- 
 diator. And, to complete this abdication of your 
 most solemn relations, you assume to be only in 
 some very relaxed and undefined manner, sub- 
 jects 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 absurdity, that 
 while thus you are actually involved in relations 
 which no power but that which could annihilate 
 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 
 
154 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 your life on a plan, as if this relative condition 
 of your spirit were abolished, or were nothing 
 but a fantastic theory, and contract all the in- 
 terests 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 in- 
 to 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 repre- 
 sentation, you would do well to make it a dis- 
 tinct matter to be brought to the proof. Try 
 it by any mode of questioning that would the 
 most prominently expose the truth. For ex- 
 ample : 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 con- 
 sciousness of being pervaded, in your every fa- 
 culty, quality, and thought, by the sunbeams, as 
 it were, of his irresistible intelligence, an affect- 
 ing sense of your entire dependence, a horror 
 for having sinned against him, an ardent aspira- 
 tion to enjoy his eternal favour, and a determi- 
 nation with the utmost impulse of your affections 
 and will, to serve him thenceforward, — say, 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 155 
 
 whether this would not be the most amazing 
 phenomenon that had ever happened to you ? 
 Would you not wonder, beyond all power of ex- 
 pression, 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 G od, your creator, 
 preserver, and governor, the supreme benefactor, 
 and the sole possible 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 inter- 
 ference of his dominion, the wonders and mys- 
 teries involved within your own existence, have 
 but feebly and seldom brought the apprehension 
 of him to your minds. The good which you 
 have enjoyed, and which could not have come 
 to you but through an inconceivably multifari- 
 ous 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 reflect- 
 ing on it so much as to acknowledge even that 
 for its source. The schemes which have been 
 the chief business and interest of your life, were 
 formed with no express consideration whether 
 God would approve them, and prosecuted in ut- 
 ter forgetfulness of dependence on him for aid 
 
156 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 and success. If the thought had spontaneously 
 arisen, What is God to me, in sensible impor- 
 tance ? the reply might have been, Nothing ; or 
 less, at most, than that person, my friend, or 
 that other, my foe; than that ability of my coad- 
 jutors, that application of art, that machinery, 
 that sum of emolument. As to piety aspiring 
 so high as the experience of communion with 
 God, and the influential operation of his Spirit, 
 if such ideas, conveyed in such terms, inciden- 
 tally met your notice, they appeared either un- 
 intelligible or fanatical. Eecollect 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 him- 
 self with carrying on the general system of the 
 world, only rendered a little more commodious, 
 would allow you to live in it indefinitely onward 
 — and let you alone f 
 
 Now, if there should be an interval when you 
 are inclined (for some of you profess to be capa- 
 ble of abstracted mental employments) to in- 
 dulge your imagination in contemplating awful 
 and portentous spectacles, in ideal or actual ex- 
 istence, you need not range in quest of such in- 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 157 
 
 to 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 dark 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 region with 
 its presence. For here, in the condition of your 
 spirits, the sovereign and most sacred principle 
 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, ex- 
 istent from eternity to eternity, the originator, 
 supporter, and disposer of all other existence ; 
 and to feel no powerful impression on your mind, 
 no reverential fear, no frequent intimations even 
 of the very fact, — is not this an astonishing vi- 
 olation of all rectitude, a most melancholy dere- 
 liction of all reason? This is to have your 
 best faculties shrunk and stupified to a strange 
 conformity with brutal nature, without its inno- 
 cence and impunity. This is in effect to tell 
 that Being, that his infinite supremacy is a vain 
 circumstance in this province of his dominion ; 
 that his is an unnecessary and undesirable pre- 
 sence, tolerable only while leaving you unre- 
 minded of it, or consenting to be regarded with 
 indifference. It is as if, with an inversion of 
 
158 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 piety, you would thank him only for being in- 
 visible 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 magnificence of his glory. Under the 
 heaven and effulgence of that glory, you deliber- 
 ately involve your spirits, as it were, within little 
 opake 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 expression of the truth. Be- 
 ware, also, that you do not, on such a subject, 
 mistake for soberness any 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 estimate 
 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 
 
TO MEX OF THE WORLD. 159 
 
 would be exposed to you in alarming manifesta- 
 tion, if your reflection should cast a faithful 
 light upon it in the instances in which you may 
 have the evidence that it is a fact. Fix your 
 attention on some of those circumstances which 
 will prove to you that you are " without God in 
 the world," and honestly endeavour to see in 
 those exemplifications, whether it be possible to 
 overrate the irrationality, the guilt, and the dan- 
 ger. Thus, for instance, when you feel yourself 
 vigilantly, and even intensely solicitous about 
 your reputation among your fellow-mortals, as if 
 the essence 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 thousandth part of the measure of con- 
 cern, how you stand in the account of the Go- 
 vernor and Judge of the world ; and then dwell 
 on this fact with judicial consideration, and an- 
 swer to yourself whether there be not a profound 
 depravity in such a state of mind. When you 
 have been spending many hours in society, with 
 a lively interchange of sentiments, with your at- 
 tention 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 ?) that you hardly once, all the while, re- 
 collected the presence of the greatest Being in 
 
160 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 the universe ; and then soberly consider what a 
 grossness of spirit is proved by such an oblivion. 
 A show of human countenances and figures, a 
 circulation of ordinary converse, with some in- 
 termingling excitement of vanity and competi- 
 tion, were enough to preclude, during the race 
 of so many thousands of your moments, all re- 
 cognition of Him, who was then preserving your 
 life, inspecting your heart, witnessing your pro- 
 cedure ; and who was adored by whatever no- 
 bler spirits might have their offices to perform 
 in this part of the terrestrial scene. Think of 
 this, and confess that such a complete and pro- 
 longed absence of the recollection betrays a con- 
 dition of mind most refractory to the training 
 for that other society, where his presence is con- 
 tinually felt as the one most impressive fact, and 
 most animating cause of delight. 
 
 It may be allowed to descend to still more 
 special illustrations. We may suppose one of 
 you to direct his look or his walk over a piece 
 of ground, in which he has the rights of a pro- 
 prietor — till his successor shall take them. He 
 might reflect, that this space of earth has more 
 occupied his thoughts and affections, has been 
 beyond comparison a more interesting reality to 
 him, than the Author and Sustainer of the whole 
 creation. Then let him look again on the soil, 
 exert one solemn act of thought toward Him by 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 1C1 
 
 whom and in whom all things exist, and judge 
 whether this be not a horrid impiety. Another 
 of you has gazed upon, and leaned over, the ma- 
 terial which represents wealth, and confers the 
 power of it ; he has stood by his god, delighted 
 and absorbed, without thought or care respect- 
 ing any other, in earth or heaven. It should 
 be possible, when he shall find himself in this 
 situation again, to constrain himself to one effort 
 of serious reflection ; and when he has done so, 
 let him tell whether he did not seem to hear a 
 voice say, " Thy money perish with thee." Some 
 of you may be men of a more refined taste, and 
 may have drawn into your possession a rich 
 collection of the works of genius, in literature 
 and art. Let them confess to themselves whe- 
 ther they have not contemplated the splendid 
 and growing accumulation with a delight, a care, 
 and a pride of incomparably stronger prevalence 
 in the mind, than any sentiment regarding the 
 Divinity. To be thus environed with the pro- 
 ductions (even though they little, in truth, con- 
 sulted them,) of the most vigorous and cultivated 
 minds of many regions and ages, constituted 
 perhaps a kind of heathen elysium, in which 
 they were insensible of any necessity of converse 
 with the perfect Intelligence, the Source of all 
 mental light, of all beauty and grandeur. But 
 shall their dwelling amidst the collected results 
 
 L 
 
162 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 of thinking, be itself a cause to disable them for 
 reflection? If not, let them consider what is 
 the true quality of that passion by which they 
 are rendering this abode the scene of a voluntary 
 exile from " the Father of lights," raising as it 
 were a wall, constructed of the works and mon- 
 uments of human intellect, to shut themselves 
 up from his communications. And let them re- 
 flect how melancholy it must be, to go away 
 from amidst the pomp of literary treasures, poor, 
 (and the more so for the very passion for possess- 
 ing them, and the idolatry of them as possessed,) 
 in all the attainments and dispositions prepara- 
 tory to an entrance on that scene where no truth, 
 no intellectual glory, no ideas or realities of 
 sublimity or beauty, can be apprehended sepa- 
 rately from their Divine Original. Let the gra- 
 tified possessor look again at the imposing array 
 of the vehicles of all that has been the most 
 powerful, admirable, and enchanting in human 
 thought and fancy, but with a reflection with 
 which he may never before have surveyed the 
 spectacle. Here is the intellectual world con- 
 centrated, as it were, and embodied before me. 
 It is but a small portion of it which the brevity 
 of life, with its many employments and griev- 
 ances will permit to be of any avail to me for a 
 valuable use; but I find there is a principle ope- 
 rating, which can turn the whole collectively to 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 163 
 
 a pernicious effect. For the more I delight my- 
 self in being surrounded with this affluence of 
 the productions of mind, the less am I disposed 
 to communication with Him whose living influ- 
 ences on my spirit can alone make me wise and 
 happy. But can I be content to think, that I 
 shall, after a little while, retire from this proud 
 temple to the honour of human intellect, actu- 
 ally doomed to take with me an unfitness ac- 
 quired in it for the life of intelligence and felicity 
 in the immediate presence of God ? 
 
 Again, some of you might be addressed as 
 persons raised high above the level of the com- 
 munity, in wealth, rank, or power, or all these 
 together. You, of this order, sometimes look 
 down to see how far the multitude are be- 
 low. And proud, indeed, would your position 
 be, if, in looking down from your eminence, you 
 did not descry certain things which, if we may 
 express it so, dare to look up, and dare, though 
 the multitude do not, to ascend. Against such 
 things as vexation, pain, sickness, old age, and 
 death, your lofty station is not embattled ; and 
 their commission to ravage the plain below con- 
 tains no restriction that they respect your ele- 
 vated ground. Still, notwithstanding, you are 
 highly pleased with the situation which exhibits 
 you in such splendour, affords such variety of 
 gratifications, and gives so commanding an as- 
 
164 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 cendancy over inferior mankind. You indulge 
 sometimes in the luxury of verifying to your- 
 selves, by an act of reflection, what a fortunate 
 lot it is that you possess : and the images you 
 raise to augment this luxury, by contrast with 
 what you can the most forcibly represent to 
 yourselves as infelicity, are those of a condition 
 in life insignificant, obscure, and indigent. This 
 proud complacency would perhaps be heightened, 
 if you could have a disclosure fully made to you 
 of the mortification and envy felt, by many tens 
 of thousands, in comparing their situation with 
 yours. Indeed you sometimes do, some of you, 
 gratify yourselves by imagining this. But, 
 amidst all the satisfaction or exultation, have 
 you no perception of a shade stealing over the 
 tract of brightness where you are walking in 
 pride ; an ominous gloom, charged with deep 
 meaning, " instinct itself with spirit," and giving 
 intimation of a Being who knows no envy or 
 admiration, and is no "respecter of persons" ? 
 True, there is very much in your situation to 
 prevent all such perceptions. It is striking to 
 consider, what resources it affords for escaping 
 or expelling the invasion of all serious thought 
 that should make any reference to heaven. The 
 means you possess for change of place, and every 
 other stimulant variety ; the pomp and show of 
 life ; the routine of ceremony; the amusements 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 165 
 
 offering in rapid and endless succession ; the 
 epicurean gratifications ; and, in the case of 
 some of you, the extensive concerns of business 
 and enterprise, or the management of important 
 public affairs ; — all these are of mighty efficacy, 
 as long as you enjoy tolerable health, for avert- 
 ing the admonitions of a more solemn interest. 
 On every side to which you turn, the " god of 
 this world" has disposed his enchantments, that 
 you should not see the objects which are making 
 signs to you by authority of Heaven, nor hear 
 their call. And you are pleased to have it so ; 
 as the people of former ages, when that specta- 
 cle of rare appearance in their hemisphere, which 
 they denominated the -blazing star, was regard- 
 ed as of direful presage, were glad that an un- 
 broken array of clouds should vail the sky, to 
 yield them a temporary but thoughtless allevia- 
 tion of their alarm, by concealing the dreaded 
 phenomenon. If you could resolve on an exer- 
 cise of reflection, to ascertain the causes of the 
 gratification you feel in these pomps, diversities, 
 luxuries, and occupations, you would find a very 
 material one to be, that they save you from any 
 serious and prolonged recognition of the Al- 
 mighty, and of those great subjects inseparable 
 from the idea of him. You would instantly be 
 sensible that you are so estranged from him ; 
 and would discover that you have been thanking 
 these beguilers for assisting you to be so. 
 
166 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 But is not this a most perverted and perillous 
 condition? With the Ml consent of your will, 
 you suffer this worldly grandeur, this prosperity, 
 these quickly successive and variegated gratifica- 
 tions, to have the effect, that whatever is to be 
 dreaded from the justice and disapprobation of a 
 God neglected and despised, approaches still 
 more and more near, and hovers imminently 
 over you, without being seen or apprehended; 
 as the monarch of Babylon's sumptuous revelry 
 was the very cause that the destroyer of all that 
 triumph could come so close without being per- 
 ceived. Think also of the circumstance, that 
 while you are placed, by the possession of the 
 high advantages (that is, what may and ought 
 to be advantages) of your situation, under a most 
 cogent responsibility to God for their use, you 
 suffer this very possession to render you thought- 
 less of this responsibility. What will prove to 
 be the guilt and the consequence of such con- 
 duct towards him? To complete the estimate 
 of such a condition, consider how certainly all 
 this pageant of your pride, pomp, and luxury, 
 will break up, and be gone, when the angel of 
 death alights by you, to send your spirits, dives- 
 ted, disenchanted, but unprepared to their great 
 account. A funeral parade over your dust will 
 seem as if expressly designed in mockery of your 
 past grandeur, by celebrating your ejection from 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 167 
 
 it; and will serve your equally thoughtless suc- 
 cessors for a variety in the exhibition of their 
 pride and state. 
 
 In all the ranks of society, (below the high- 
 est,) there are very many actuated by a restless 
 ambition to obtain the notice and conceded ac- 
 quaintance of those above them. In turning 
 our observations, for a moment, to persons of 
 this description, we might appeal to their own 
 consciousness of what it is that they allow to 
 take precedence of all thoughts and solicitudes 
 relating to God. There is sometimes stealing 
 upon you a sentiment of mortification, that your 
 lot had not been cast in a higher rank, and that it 
 is in vain to think of attaining the envied station. 
 Fortunately for your self-complacency, you can 
 turn this chagrin into an active spirit for gain- 
 ing the next best object in your esteem, that is, 
 to be on such terms with those above you as 
 shall gratify both your pride and your vanity. 
 You aspire eagerly to be acknowledged by them, 
 and to be seen to be acknowledged, as persons of 
 some account in their estimation. You work 
 assiduously, by manners expressive of deference, 
 by adulation, when you can venture to offer it, 
 by officious and voluntary services, and some of 
 you by gross servility, to purchase their favour- 
 able attention. And when a degree of it is con- 
 ferred on you, in a manner not too palpably that 
 of condescension, (though you are net, perhaps, 
 
168 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 very fastidious on this point.) you are elated as 
 if you had acquired some great accession of in- 
 trinsic worth. You solicitously watch for still 
 more unequivocal tokens of the gracious dispo- 
 sition, and for occasions of putting yourselves in 
 the way to receive them. And the progress of 
 your success is probably marked by a more state- 
 ly or a more condescending manner, assumed to- 
 ward your inferiors. Some of you, of prouder 
 temperament, and vigorous talent, disdaining all 
 the servile expedients, aspire to command the 
 estimation and respectful attention of the higher 
 favourites of fortune. And when you have in 
 a measure done so, you exult as if it were some 
 grand victory. It appears to you a splendid 
 achievement to have conquered possession, by 
 means of solely personal qualifications, of a 
 ground where you stand on nearly an equality, 
 in effect, with persons whose honours and im- 
 portance in the world may consist alone in the 
 splendour of their external circumstances. You 
 may affect to depreciate this extrinsic impor- 
 tance of theirs ; but you are vastly gratified by 
 that kind of community with them to which 
 your abilities and exertions have mounted you. 
 — Thus, " man worships man," as a method in- 
 stinctively adopted in aid of each man's worship 
 of himself. 
 
 Now this habitual passion and labour to real- 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 169 
 
 ise some imaginary element of well-being in the 
 good graces of your superior fellow- mortals, may 
 have so debased the temper of your spirit, that 
 any admonition suggested to withdraw and raise 
 your thoughts toward Him who is supreme to 
 judge, to bless, and to confer honour, may be like 
 calling the attention of an uncultivated rustic 
 to the sublimities of astronomy. The infinite 
 greatness of God above all things, the obligation 
 of a constant reference to him, the honour that 
 comes from him, the duty of aspiring to be ac- 
 knowledged by him with approbation, and the 
 glory of possessing it, — all these are but feeble 
 glimpses on your apprehension. But this is a 
 degraded and guilty predicament. Endeavour 
 to think what it must be, to be valuing your- 
 selves just so much the more, in proportion as 
 you succeed in prevailing on these earthly demi- 
 gods of your prostrate superstition to accept, and 
 sparingly reward, the homage which you refuse 
 to the Almighty. Think what it is to watch 
 and wait with anxiety, with manoeuvres of in- 
 sinuation, with patience resolutely maintained, 
 or impatience unavailingly indulged, and even 
 with sacrifices and self-denial, for looks and ex- 
 pressions of complaisance, acknowledging you as 
 not unknown or despised, from creatures of your 
 own kind, possibly of little worth, and insignifi- 
 cant but for their appendages of fortune, so soon 
 
170 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 to be resigned ; while you are totally regardless 
 of that sovereign Power who is inviting you to 
 the honour of being acquainted with Him. And 
 when your vanity is gratified, in thinking how 
 you stand exhibited in the view of other men as 
 enjoying a measure of the dearly-bought privi- 
 lege, one serious reflection might expose to you 
 what ignominy inexpressible it is, to be elated at 
 appearing before a portion of society with the 
 distinction of some flattering attention from your 
 superiors, and to be perfectly indifferent in what 
 account you shall be seen to be held by the Judge 
 of the world, when men and angels will be the 
 witnesses of the estimation. 
 
 Men of the world might be addressed on one 
 other very general characteristic of their spirit 
 and proceeding. Many of you are zealously in- 
 tent on the advancement and amply endowed 
 establishment of your families ; ambitiously com- 
 passing for them, at whatever moral cost or ha- 
 zard, the utmost quantity of the materials of 
 prosperity. Under the consciousness, though 
 little and reluctantly brought into any distinct- 
 ness of thought, that your own tenure is but for 
 a very limited term, the mind instinctively seeks 
 to escape into any factitious mode of extending 
 the interest of moral existence, and yields to 
 some undefined sort of deception, as if in your 
 surviving descendants you were to retain some 
 
 
TO MEN 'OP THE WORLD. 171 
 
 kind sympathetic life yourselves. In this inig- 
 matical feeling, for yourselves and them, you 
 study and scheme and toil, to place them on the 
 most advantageous ground, or in the way to at- 
 tain it. And this being effected, the great busi- 
 ness for them is accomplished ! How often we 
 have been struck with wonder in observing some 
 of you, dwelling with delight and pride on the 
 prosperous introduction into life, and the fine 
 prospects, of one and another branch of your fa- 
 mily, and evidently with an entire inadvertence to 
 any greater concern affecting their welfare. Se- 
 cure the primary object of their passing through 
 life in a handsome style, in fair repute, and with 
 plenty of the world's accommodations at their 
 command ; and that other affair, of their being 
 accountable to God, of its being their chief busi- 
 ness in life to be his servants, may be left as an 
 insignificant matter, about which you do not, 
 and they need not, take any trouble. You are 
 thus willing to be destitute of religion virtually 
 beyond your individual capacity, and to take on 
 you the weight of responsibility for its exclusion 
 from your relative sphere. You are consenting, 
 as it were, to be irreligious both in yourselves, 
 and in those who are to survive you; saying, 
 Let us form a family compact for the prolonga- 
 tion of impiety; a patriarch and a posterity 
 estranged from the Father in heaven. But thus 
 
172 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 to render yourselves expressly their authorities 
 for living without God, is it not a most sinister 
 and fearful office that you perform for them ? 
 When they shall find that all you have wished 
 and schemed for them 3 and incited them to at- 
 tain, has left their main interest abandoned to 
 ruin ; that paternal care has operated systema- 
 tically to betray them out of all recollection and 
 all favour of the mightiest Patron, what will be 
 the language of the thanks they will return you? 
 And think what it will be, to be associated with 
 them in the natural result of this present es- 
 trangement from him, in a sad exile, at last, 
 from his presence. And see, in this condition, 
 and in that prospect, how alienation from God 
 destroys the value of that one affection which is 
 always represented as the most genuine and 
 faithful of human charities. 
 
 These exemplifications, with the questions 
 and censures on them, have been attempted in a 
 form to lead you, men of the world, into such 
 reflection as would verify to your own minds, 
 that your prevailing spirit actually does disown 
 your relations to God, that it is irreligion ; 
 and to expose to you that such a condition is 
 fatally wrong. They have represented that 
 religion chiefly as it is apparent in reference 
 to the more commanding and awful characters 
 in which the Divine Being is to be acknowledged, 
 
TO MEtf OF THE WORLD. 173 
 
 as supremely great and powerful, as present with 
 perfect intelligence through all existence, as the 
 observer and judge of all moral agents. We 
 should have more distinctly admonished you 
 to take account how you are affected towards 
 him in his character of sovereign goodness, in 
 which you might have access to find infinite re- 
 sources for felicity. Reflect what it is that you 
 do, in declining all communication with him in 
 this relation. In a certain possible state of 
 your spirit toward him, you would have the 
 sense of his attention resting on you, directly 
 and individually, as a favoured creature, with 
 emanations of benignity which would breathe a 
 deep emphatic vitality into your soul. And from 
 all the objects and interests which would di- 
 versely engage your thoughts and affections, 
 you would return at intervals to be sensibly in 
 the presence of a Divine Friend, and realize it 
 still again as both the delight and the energy of 
 your existence. Think, then, what it is to be so 
 compacted and consubstantial, as it were, with 
 the world, as in effect to say, Nothing of all this 
 is mine, and for nothing of all this do I care. I 
 have no adaptation nor desire to reciprocate 
 sentiments with any being of higher order than 
 myself. If God do really offer himself for such 
 communication with men, I must forego the 
 privilege, of which I could have no possession 
 
174 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 without I know not what vast change in my 
 spirit and habits. But, indeed, I have no con- 
 ception of such a mystical source of delight. 
 How should any one receive tokens of special 
 favour, responsive to his own emotions and aspi- 
 rations, from a Being who never appears nor 
 speaks to the world, and whose concern is with 
 the wide creation as a whole ? However it may 
 be, such a spiritual sympathy is not for my ex- 
 perience; and I must content myself with such 
 good as I can draw from intercourse with the 
 objects in the scene around me. With these is 
 my soul in communion; they are my happiness; 
 and do not disturb me with warnings of what it 
 will be to go into the presence of God as a 
 stranger when I must leave them. I hope that, 
 in some way or other, I shall have sufficiently 
 made peace with him, against the time when I 
 am to find myself present with him, and no 
 longer with them. 
 
 If your devotedness to the world be thus a 
 fatal alienation from God, it is comparatively 
 but little to add, that it places you out of frater- 
 nity of feeling and character with the best and 
 noblest of mankind. This may generally not 
 cause you much mortification ; and, lest it should 
 do so, you have recourse to the expedient of de- 
 preciating the religious character, as exemplified 
 
TO MEK OF THE WORLD. 175 
 
 in those who professedly bear it. But your at- 
 tention must have been sometimes arrested by 
 such examples, on record, or in the living world, 
 as defied your self- defensive malice. You have 
 beheld a real, unquestionable devotion to God, 
 to truth, to holiness, and to another world. You 
 have observed men living in habitual acknow- 
 ledgment of the Divine presence and authority, 
 preserving a faithful conscience, and obeying it 
 in scenes of temptation — maintaining fidelity to 
 their high principle, through all changes of sea- 
 son and condition — amidst the troubles of their 
 lot, deriving consolation from above and from 
 hereafter — throughout their mortal course still 
 looking forward to the end, and terminating it 
 in the assurance, that they were " dying in the 
 Lord." There was left you no cause or power 
 to doubt that this was all genuine/ and you felt 
 self-convicted of baseness, if you affected to ques- 
 tion it. You were also constrained to admit, 
 that these are the true exemplifications of reli- 
 gion, and that, therefore, all cavils raised against 
 it from the unworthy character of many of its 
 ostensible adherents, are wickedly dishonest. To 
 say that but few professed religionists exhibit 
 this combination of qualities in such high ex- 
 cellence, is saying nothing, unless you could as- 
 sert that such excellence, when it does exist, is 
 something more, or something else, than religion. 
 
176 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 It is a matter of great difficulty to decide 
 what degree of deficiency of such a character 
 may not be incompatible with the essential of 
 personal religion. But at all events, here are 
 placed in your view those whom religion has 
 rendered the very best of the human race. Nor 
 can you evade the point for which we cite them, 
 by saying they were recluses and ascetics and 
 therefore inappropriate examples for any use of 
 condemnatory comparison with you, who are ne- 
 cessarily occupied with the business of the world. 
 For many of them were much and variously em- 
 ployed in that business, and showed how religion 
 may be mingled with secular interest and trans- 
 actions, so as to retain its own brightness and 
 throw lustre on them. 
 
 Now, we are confident you cannot deny that 
 there are moments of transient light on your 
 mind, when the conviction comes upon you, that 
 this is the worthiest, noblest, most admirable 
 order of human character, however indistinctly 
 you may apprehend some of the most refined 
 principles on which it is formed, and however 
 disposed you may be to the imputation of mys- 
 ticism and excess. On any question arising in 
 you reflections, who are the most truly estimable 
 and dignified, the most wise and the most safe, 
 your thoughts involuntarily glance toward this 
 class of men, and you cannot make them fix on 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 177 
 
 any other. They are the honourable and select 
 of mankind, the "people favoured of the Lord," 
 and Balaam cannot blast or degrade them for 
 you. 
 
 And shall it be your only regret that you 
 cannot reduce them to your own level ? Would 
 you deem it a desirable thing that they could 
 be re-converted (such as are living) to that 
 worldly character which now separates you so 
 far from their community ; so that there should 
 be none to shine in contrast with you, as exem- 
 plifying the possible glory of that nature which 
 you degrade ? Eeflect soberly, whether, if you 
 did see and feel and act like the best of those 
 men, it would not be a most happy change from 
 your present condition. Would it not be happy 
 that the state of your mind corresponded to one 
 inspiring sentiment of these men, — that they 
 have a Master in heaven whom it is delightful 
 to serve; to another, that no faithful effort or 
 sacrifice will, as to its reward, be lost ; to ano- 
 ther, that every victory over sin surpasses the 
 value of all worldly successes or triumphs ; to 
 another, that their guilt is pardoned through the 
 divine mercy; to another, that they, and all their 
 concerns are under a sovereign guardianship 
 which can never err or fail ; and that, therefore, 
 in every juncture they have the mightiest power 
 in the universe at hand for their assistance ; and 
 
178 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 to still another, that one sensible interest in 
 transacting the successive affairs assigned them 
 in this world, is in the circumstance, that each 
 one accomplished has carried them so much 
 farther toward quitting the whole for something 
 better ? Comprehend in the account whatever 
 other things form a part of the difference which 
 religion makes between them and you; allow 
 this difference to verify itself to you as a reality; 
 and then say, whether you can be fully content 
 and self-complacent in standing thus dissociated. 
 Estimate impartially any favourite worldly ob- 
 ject, pursued or possessed, and think whether 
 that would not be well surrendered to place you 
 in a community of situation with these Chris- 
 tian spirits. In a lucid hour, you cannot but 
 perceive, that, by being associated with them in 
 congeniality of feeling and action, you would be 
 in harmony with those grand laws and relations 
 of your existence with which you are now at 
 variance, and often at war. Those bonds of 
 connection with the highest objects, adamantine 
 bonds, which with all your striving you cannot 
 break, but which you now feel, when recognized 
 at all, as fatal chains to what you cannot love, 
 and to a doom which you dread and cannot es- 
 cape, would then be vital conductors through 
 which you would communicate with heaven. 
 United to that assembly, you would stand on a 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 179 
 
 ground where beams descend from the eternal 
 sun, where angels visit, where afflictions are 
 turned to blessings, where death is divested of 
 his terrors. You would be able to say, with 
 cordial emphasis, Wherever their souls shall be, 
 there let mine be for ever. 
 
 On the other hand, look at the men with 
 whom you are now conjoined and assimilated. 
 As your own men of the world, the models to 
 which you conform yourselves, the class with 
 whose destiny you are committing your own, it 
 might be presumed they should have your ap- 
 probation, your confidence, your sincere affec- 
 tion. But is it so ? Take an honest account 
 of what you think of them, in moments when 
 you are drawn a little aside from the bustle in 
 which you are mingled with them, and when, 
 for a short time, you feel your league with them 
 somewhat relaxed. At such times, you will 
 have found yourself looking at them with a cold, 
 keen, judicial inspection ; recalling to mind their 
 conduct toward one another, or yourself; ob- 
 serving their motives, and admitting an estimate 
 of these men of your preference and fraternity. 
 The narrowness of their purposes, their selfish- 
 ness, the world-hardened cast of their feelings, 
 and their unsound principles, stood palpably ex- 
 posed in your view. Confess how often you have 
 been thrown into a very different train of think- 
 
180 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 ing of them from that of considering them as 
 your friends, your own chosen favourite class. 
 Confess that you do not and cannot feel a gen- 
 uine esteem for them, not to say affection or 
 veneration. You do not repose a tranquil con- 
 fidence in them. You have to watch and guard 
 and surround yourselves with every precaution. 
 With many of them you find yourselves in un- 
 disguised competition; and with your very allies 
 and coadjutors you dare not remit the exercise 
 of a silent vigilance on their movements, and all 
 the indications of their dispositions and designs, 
 — a vigilance which, you need not doubt, is ex- 
 ercised on you in return. What invaluable be- 
 ings you are to one another, if you be right in 
 this reciprocal distrust ! 
 
 Even as to religion, careless as you are about 
 it, you occasionally feel a certain indistinct im- 
 pression, that some other worldly men are too 
 careless; especially when you observe any of 
 them in declining health, or far advanced in age, 
 as eagerly intent on worldly pursuits as if they 
 had the assurance of half a century of life before 
 them. You could not avoid some perception 
 of incongruity in this, which has betrayed you 
 into the expression, It is really time for that 
 man to begin to think a little of other concerns. 
 It may very possibly have happened to you, to 
 be disgusted, and almost shocked, to see one of 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 181 
 
 your thorough men of the world resuming all 
 his ease, vivacity, and ambition, for playing his 
 part in it, with hardly the shortest interval after 
 some sad event in his family or nearest connec- 
 tions. If such an event brought him an acces- 
 sion of temporal advantage, he waited, perhaps, 
 barely "one little month," to rush, with the im- 
 pulse of his new forces, and the exultation of 
 having acquired them, into the busiest or the 
 gayest scenes of life. Supposing, again, that 
 you have been dangerously ill, and visited by one 
 of your fraternity, you have seen what a man of 
 the world can do in the way of consolation. 
 What was the balm which that physician ap- 
 plied ? If you could not believe the assurances 
 which he made to you (whether he thought so or 
 not,) that you would recover, what resource was 
 presented to you besides ? 
 
 In short, you will not deny, that if there could 
 be given you what you could believe to be an 
 undeceptive presage, that though associated with 
 the men of the world now, you should not be so 
 hereafter, it would please you exceedingly. We 
 mean, it would do so at those more thoughtful 
 seasons, when the real quality of your worldly 
 association, its heartlessness, its want of mutual 
 approbation, its poverty of the means of allevia- 
 ting sorrow, and its destitution of moral dignity, 
 are exposed, in a degree, to your reluctant ap- 
 
182 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 prehension; and when to all this is added, that 
 its advantages and pleasures^ whatever they may 
 be, are limited) both in fact and hope, to a dim- 
 inutive portion of your existence. This closing 
 consideration throws a deeply melancholy char- 
 acter over the whole vast spectacle of your mul- 
 titudes and activities. A crowd of human beings 
 in prodigious ceaseless stir to keep the dust of 
 the earth in motion, and then to sink into it, 
 while all beyond is darkness and desolation ! It 
 is as if a great army, appointed to march on 
 some magnificent enterprise of distant conquest, 
 should confine themselves to waste all their en- 
 ergy in an idle tumult of strifes and revellings in 
 their camp, and obstinately stay on the ground 
 to perish away, and be interred there. 
 
 On a whole view of these representations it 
 must needs appear, that, in your devotion to the 
 world, you are losing the grand object of your 
 existence. This is the plain brief sentence on 
 your course of life. And it is most striking to 
 think how insignificantly it may sound to you, 
 whose guilt and calamity it pronounces. Will 
 you say what combination of words that you 
 could hear, would pass more lightly off? You 
 have heard it, and, perhaps within a few minutes 
 after, retained in your consciousness no trace of 
 any thing impressive having been made sensible 
 to your mind. Are you not tempted to repeat 
 
TO ME^ OF THE WORLD. 183 
 
 it, for the mere curiosity of observing how much 
 at ease you can be, with what seems of such for- 
 midable import; as if you were playing with a 
 snake, rendered harmless by the deprivation of 
 its fangs, or by your possessing the Egyptian's 
 charms against them? Repeat the sentence 
 which affirms you are disowning and losing the 
 great purpose for which you are sent into the 
 world, and smile at the seriousness which thinks 
 it an expression of fearful meaning. Say, you 
 are sensible of nothing lost, as long as the good 
 things of the world are gained, "Thou sayest 
 I am rich, and encreased with goods, and have 
 need of nothing ; and knowest not that thou art 
 wretched and miserable and poor and blind and 
 naked." It is not, however, that you are in- 
 capable of being profoundly affected by the short 
 proposition in words of something disastrous in 
 your situation. The few words that should an- 
 nounce to you that your house, or other valuable 
 property was in flames : or that (supposing you 
 a trafficker by sea) a ship, in which you had an 
 important adventure, had been last seen driving, 
 in a shattered state, at the mercy of a storm ; or 
 the judgment positively signified to you on a 
 topical disease, that you could be relieved only 
 by a frightful amputation ; or the most laconic 
 whisper that should apprise you of a design form- 
 ed against your life, — would produce such an in- 
 
184 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 tense excitement, as if all your strongest past 
 emotions, extinct and almost forgotten, came, 
 as by a general resurrection, again to life, com- 
 bined in one tumultuous alarm. And yet the 
 melancholy truth, pressed upon you in admoni- 
 tion, that the primary object of life, the grand 
 venture and value of your existence, is thus far 
 lost, and in the course to be finally lost, through 
 your devotion to the world, may leave your mind 
 unmoved, to await the stronger impression of 
 the next inconsiderable temporal misfortune. 
 
 But you are awaiting also, little as you may 
 apprehend or care for it, impressions of another 
 order, and from another cause. They are re- 
 served, most inevitably to come, after a certain 
 succession, longer or shorter, of emotions from 
 ordinary causes shall have had their times, and 
 be gone by. A thoughtful religious mind often 
 perceives intimations concerning you, prophetic 
 images, as it were mingling with the sight of 
 your persons, while it beholds you thus absorbed 
 in worldly interest, and insensible of what you 
 are doing in throwing away an infinitely greater. 
 That man, and that other, how little do they 
 care that all the powers of their being, and 
 periods of their time, are useless for the noblest 
 and the absolutely indispensable purpose of life ! 
 How content that what they are acquiring should 
 be at the cost of what they are losing! How 
 
TO MEX OF THE WORLD. 185 
 
 easily they can say, in effect, " Get thee behind 
 me," to any thing that would tell them what it 
 is that they are sacrificing to their idol, and 
 warn them of the consequence ! But to each of 
 them an hour is coming, at some certain dis- 
 tance in approaching time, when they will awake 
 from the infatuation, to the surprise and dismay 
 of seeing that their life has been so far in vain. 
 They will look back to behold it, with all its 
 fair and precious possibilities, blasted and deso- 
 lated by their having passed over it. They will 
 look back to measure how far it might have 
 carried them on toward the possession of incor- 
 ruptible treasures, unfading honours, an eternal 
 inheritance; and then to acknowledge the mise- 
 rable fact, that it has not advanced them one 
 stage or step. It will come, — the hour which 
 is charged with the destination to afflict them. 
 There may be temporal grievances or misfor- 
 tunes, affixed by divine appointment to certain 
 parts of the time coming on ; but infallibly there 
 is, somewhere in the train, the hour commission- 
 ed to bear the yet unkindled element which will 
 flame against their consciences. Will it be while 
 there are yet to follow days of protracted grace, 
 and possible " newness of life ;" or will it be the 
 conclusion of their time, and lighten on them 
 only that they may read the sentence of an in- 
 evitable doom ? Or is it the appointed moment, 
 
186 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 of that awakening to the conviction that life has 
 been expended in vain, reserved to come after 
 the last of the hours on earth ? — With such 
 thoughts the serious observer looks towards fu- 
 turity on your account, while you are heedlessly, 
 and perhaps you call it pleasantly, occupying 
 your life in the very manner which will bring 
 at length this conviction, that you have slighted 
 and lost its chief end. 
 
 Allow us to remind you of so obvious a con- 
 sideration, as that of the rapid passing away of 
 your life. A large proportion of you, of the 
 character in question, have reached its middle 
 period ; many are going down into its decline ; 
 some have the certainty of being near its termina- 
 tion. And you cannot but have been often struck 
 with the reflection, how soon each period of it, 
 which had been before you, was gone into the 
 past. Have you never felt an impulse to quar • 
 rel with time for leaving you so fast, after you had 
 perhaps been impatient for some particular por- 
 tion of it to arrive ? But it would neither stay 
 to be your companion, nor slacken to receive 
 your reproach. It seems to come past you but 
 for the purpose of stealing away your life ; each 
 day, each hour, taking off a share of that as its 
 spoil. Observe how the theft and diminution 
 are incessantly going on, while you are plan- 
 ning, or consulting, or executing, while you are 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 1S7 
 
 striving or relaxing, exulting in success, or fret- 
 ting at failure. The one continual fact is, that 
 life is speeding off. 
 
 Now, surely, it is high time to adopt a deter- 
 mined policy with respect to that which, while 
 of immense importance to you, is thus continu- 
 ally deserting you. And the right policy is, not 
 to attach yourselves, as your main object of in- 
 terest, to any thing to which life cannot be at- 
 tached and fixed in abiding conjunction. In 
 other words, how is any thing practically of 
 value, but as you can have life for its prosecu- 
 tion, possession, and use ? There are in the 
 world riches, "respects of honour," amusements, 
 gratification of curiosity, delights of the senses, 
 what you please. If you could command life 
 to delay, or to take a fixed state, so that you 
 might effectually appropriate these, and unite 
 them, as it were, to your being, that were some- 
 thing. But by the rapid departure of life, that 
 is to say, of yourselves, you are denied the essen- 
 tial condition of making them yours. You but 
 snatch at them in passing, hold them for a mo- 
 ment, are carried away from them ; leaving 
 them to make a similar mockery of offering 
 themselves to the next coveters in the ever-tran- 
 sient succession. If you, believing yourselves 
 to be immortal beings, can be content with this ; 
 if you are willing to place your all in things of 
 
188 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 which your fleeting life allows you to try the 
 good but for a moment, how mysterious is it 
 that such beings should have come into the 
 world to be so befooled ! 
 
 You will hardly be so unwitting as to retort, 
 that neither can life be stayed, and rendered a 
 durable condition, for taking and holding the 
 good of the spiritual interests, any more than of 
 these temporal ones. This would be true but in 
 so narrow a sense, as not to be worth the say- 
 ing. For the cases are infinitely different. It 
 is in the nature of those higher interests, that 
 they belong to this life only as a brief prepara- 
 tory term, the great scene of their enjoyment 
 necessarily being hereafter. The main princi- 
 ple of the aspirant's connection with them here, 
 is avowedly not that of possession, but of antici- 
 pation : and in that anticipation he sees com- 
 bined with them an endless life, as his condi- 
 tion for a full possession of them. So that he 
 may be more than content, he may be grati- 
 fied, that the present life is so fleeting ; because, 
 in being so, it hastens him toward that where 
 the circumstance of transiency, inseparable from 
 the experience of a created being, will seem 
 lost in the character of permanence. For, 
 though he must possess his felicities in a succes- 
 sion of duration, the assured eternity of that 
 duration will infuse a certain effect of the per- 
 manence of the whole to be perceived in every 
 
TO MEtf OF THE WORLD. 189 
 
 successive point ; thus precluding the character 
 of evanescence from the series perpetually pass- 
 ing. In contrast to all this, your objects belong 
 exclusively to time, and to the very short time 
 of your life on earth. And therefore, the speedy 
 pace of life is the rapid parting from all you 
 are possessing, or endeavouring to possess. And 
 the possession itself, during its brief continu- 
 ance, is turned to vanity, by your knowing that 
 this pressing haste, with which you are carried 
 away from each particular of it, is just so much 
 fatal speed toward your losing it all. 
 
 But the consideration of the rapid progress of 
 life toward a close is enforced on you by more 
 familiar and palpable forms of admonition. 
 There must often be brought to your remem- 
 brance events and circumstances in your expe- 
 rience, which appear as receding far into the 
 past. Can these recollections be always unac- 
 companied by the obvious reflection, If all the 
 time since then be so much taken out of my life, 
 how reduced must be the remainder ! and, if 
 the interval between that time and this, in one 
 sense so wide, appears to have been very soon 
 passed over, can I be reckoning on a very slow 
 movement, which shall afford leisure for all 
 manner of occupations or diversions, in passing 
 over any space that can be yet in reserve for me 
 to traverse ? Perhaps some of you are conscious 
 
190 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 of a feeling occasionally arising, which would 
 shape itself into the wish that you could be young 
 again. Is this sentiment dismissed without re- 
 minding you what progress you have made, and 
 what despatch you are making, in the journey 
 of life ? Some of you see your descendants al- 
 ready busy in the worldly career ; can you have 
 evaded the suggestion, what period of your life 
 it must be, to which this stage in theirs is paral- 
 lel ! with this thought further, how soon they 
 will, if they live, have reached the same point in 
 theirs as you have in yours ; and where will you 
 be then ? When sometimes a tempting occasion 
 is presented to you, of embarking in a new 
 scheme, the thought will come over you, like one 
 of the cold winds precursory of winter, that you 
 are gone too far for any reasonable prospect of 
 living long enough to see such a project through 
 to its desired result. You are compelled to a 
 brief reluctant computation, of about what stage 
 in its prosecution might very probably be the 
 last in the course of your activities under the 
 sun. Some of you may be seen building a house, 
 for your more respectable and commodious resi- 
 dence in the latter part of your life. When, in 
 such a case, we have observed the care and vigi- 
 lance exerted to ensure that every part and ad- 
 justment be firm and durable, the question would 
 occur, Is this person, so careful about the sound- 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 191 
 
 ness of material, and security of fixture of each 
 beam, each board, each carved ornament, — is he 
 not silently visited by any thought of where he 
 shall be, long before the time that the structure 
 will show any signs of decay, long before the 
 time at which it would vex him to foresee there 
 would be any such signs ? When you are plant- 
 ing young trees, for fruit or agreeable shade, can 
 you avoid the reflection, how likely it is, that 
 before these trees will be matured to their full 
 productiveness, or be amply spread and thicken- 
 ed round the dwelling, or over the walks, you 
 will have entered another kind of shade ? And 
 then, " whose shall those things be which you 
 have provided " ? 
 
 "While exemplifications of so special a cast 
 will bear directly on some of you only, there are 
 many things of a more common kind, which 
 would admonish any of you who would practise 
 a little reflection. Consider how often you fail 
 to complete what you had in intention limited 
 to a certain time ; and then you say the time 
 was gone too soon for you to accomplish it. You 
 appropriate a portion of time, to be taken from 
 business to some pleasurable pursuit ; and how 
 soon you have to say, It is gone like a dream ! 
 The great changes of the year, or some marked 
 point of it, the anniversary of your nativity, for 
 instance, return upon you by surprise : It is but 
 
192 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED ' 
 
 as yesterday, you exclaim, since this was here 
 before. The appointed terms for transactions 
 and settlements in the course of your affairs are 
 here upon you again, when you seem to have 
 but just got rid of the last. Some of you have 
 become afraid of pledging yourselves to do one 
 thing and another, from experience that the 
 time is apt to be gone before you can make any 
 effectual movements. Many of you have begun 
 to remark, that it seems to go faster now than 
 it did in your earlier life. Some of you, per- 
 haps, occasionally fall into a mood of thought, 
 in which you number the years between your 
 present age and the farthest term to which it is 
 in any way reasonable, under the most favour- 
 able circumstances, to calculate that you may 
 live; and then intrudes the idea, that, (even sup- 
 posing you assume that you shall have so many 
 years of life,) if they shall steal off as fast as an 
 equal number of the preceding ones seem to have 
 done, you will very soon be at the end. The 
 most aged class, if they too must still retain the 
 folly of reckoning on the future, unsubdued by 
 the certain littleness of their nearly exhausted 
 store, may consider, whether even all the infir- 
 mities and burdens of the last stage will so re- 
 tard the lapse of time, that a very few more 
 summers and winters will not quickly have van- 
 ished from between them and the exit out of 
 life. 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 193 
 
 If things in some analogy to these were exhi- 
 bited as the fancied circumstances of a fictitious 
 order and condition of moral agents, devised to 
 give a strong image of a state of urgency and 
 danger, combined with insensibility, the repre- 
 sentation would excite no little of that sentiment 
 partaking of alarm, which you can feel by sym- 
 pathy for even imaginary beings. But you, men 
 of the world, know that this is a plain descrip- 
 tion of your actual situation. It is yourselves 
 who are beset by so many circumstances to ap- 
 prise you of the rapidity of the course, by which 
 you are passing out of life. And your unhappy 
 case is, that you make your life as worthless to 
 your true welfare, as it is evanescent in its con- 
 tinuance, by rejecting from your care its one 
 grand business. You act as if you really had 
 understood your existence here and hereafter, 
 not to be the same existence; but that the pre- 
 sent life was expressly appointed by the Creator 
 to be occupied with the matters of this earth ex- 
 clusively, that it was to be altogether " of the 
 earth, earthy;" and that, for the next, you are 
 to be literally created anew, in a different order 
 of being, constituted in a similar adaptation to 
 be occupied with what there may be in another 
 world, and having no reference or relation to the 
 previous and probationary state. But if such be 
 not the law of your existence, reflect what a fatal 
 
 N 
 
194 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 proceeding you adopt in so devoting, through 
 this life, your soul to this world, that when you 
 leave it, you will find the substantial thing that 
 remains with you, after all its shadows and de- 
 lusions are past, is an unfitness for a better. 
 
 Here we conclude this long course of remon- 
 strance. Perhaps you are ready to say, it is a 
 rueful and offensive representation, just such as 
 a splenetic spirit, which has quarrelled with the 
 world, would be gratified to make, in the wish 
 to poison the satisfactions of those who have yet 
 some cause to regard it as a friend; and who, at 
 all events, think it yet too soon to fall into hos- 
 tility with themselves. But consider at whose 
 cost it will be, that you repel a statement which 
 you cannot refute. The truth of the matter goes, 
 in reality, no farther off from you for being re- 
 jected, any more than the hour of death can be 
 deferred by refusing to think of it, or by heed- 
 lessness of the solemnity of the prospect. Where 
 would be the sense of a man, (if such a case 
 could be,) who should turn with impatient dis- 
 gust from the sight of characteristic morbid ap- 
 pearances shown in a delineation, and at the 
 same time be well content to bear in his own 
 person the disease itself? That the preceding 
 description of your state is in substance the truth, 
 we may challenge you to deny ; to deny, that is 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 195 
 
 to say, upon such serious and honest considera- 
 tion as you cannot refuse, without being guilty 
 of the most deplorable trifling — a trifling which 
 you will in due time meet with something that 
 will avenge. And we may appeal to your own 
 reason, thus exercised, what you would think of 
 a doctrine or a teacher, that would consent to 
 leave you satisfied with a plan of life, which, for 
 the sake of this world, renounces the good, and 
 braves the evil, of the world to come. 
 
 But, though the representation, thus far, be 
 of a menacing character, all is not dark. As 
 we have seen in a pictured view of Babylon, sup- 
 posed on the eve of its fall, there remains one 
 portion of the hemisphere, and one celestial lu- 
 minary, not yet obscured by the portentous shade. 
 While no colours can throw too gloomy an aspect 
 on the condition in which you have been de- 
 scribed, there shines on your view still that great 
 resource, to which all this series of what may 
 have seemed austere reprehensions, has been 
 aimed to constrain your attention. And if you 
 could be made to apprehend the importance 
 which there really is in the considerations so 
 inadequately conceived and expressed, you would 
 be awakened to wonder and gratitude, that, after 
 so constant and systematic a rejection of the so- 
 vereign good, you should not now find " a great 
 gulf fixed between it and you." On your side 
 
196 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 of that tremendous chasm there is still Religion, 
 accessible to you in all its blessings of deliver- 
 ance, peace, and security for hereafter. You 
 are still on that favoured ground, where you are 
 invited by a God of mercy, a Redeemer with his 
 atoning sacrifice, a Divine Spirit with all powers 
 and operations of assistance, to enter yet at last 
 into the possession of that which will be a glo- 
 rious portion when all you have been striving 
 with the world to gain will vanish in dust and 
 smoke. But be warned again, that the time is 
 passing, and a very short persistance in your 
 folly may make it too late. 
 
 Shall we, in concluding, suppose that some of 
 you may be disposed to answer these exhorta- 
 tions in some such manner as this? " But what 
 can we do? We cannot make ourselves religious. 
 Though we should admit that all this is true and 
 of the last importance, we cannot, for that com- 
 mand and compel our dispositions, our affections, 
 the settled habitude of our minds, to change into 
 the new order required. What can we do ? " 
 The answer to this should be appropriate to the 
 temper in which it is spoken. We have heard 
 of instances of expressions like these being ut- 
 tered evidently in a spirit of impious and des- 
 perate carelessness. There was no real concern 
 about the subject; but a determined addiction to 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 197 
 
 the world, and to so much of sin as that should 
 involve, a wilful avoidance of reflection, a stupid 
 and defying indifference to consequences; and 
 all this taking to itself an excuse, or almost a 
 justification, from the moral impotence of our 
 nature. The man was in effect saying, As I am 
 resolved to pursue my course, it were a satisfac- 
 tion to believe, and I will believe, that I could 
 do no otherwise; and as I am to fulfil my des- 
 tiny, the less I trouble myself with thinking about 
 it the better. Now, to a person who should re- 
 ply to religious admonitions in this disposition 
 of mind, we should deem it utterly trifling and 
 useless to offer any pleading of speculatively 
 theological or of metaphysical argument. The 
 reasoning faculty of such a man is a wretched 
 slave, that will not, and dare not, listen to one 
 word in presence and in contravention of his 
 passions and will. The only thing there would 
 be any sense in attempting, would be to press on 
 him some strong images of the horror of such a 
 deliberate self- consignment to destruction, and 
 of the monstrous enormity of taking a kind of 
 comfort in his approach to the pit, from the cir- 
 cumstance that a principle in his nature leads 
 him to it; just as if, because there is that in him 
 which impels him to perdition, it would there- 
 fore not be he that will perish. Till some awful 
 blast smite on his fears, his reason and con- 
 science will be unavailing. 
 
198 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 If he be guarded on the side of his fears, by 
 entertaining a light opinion of that consequence 
 on which he is so precipitating himself; should 
 he say, that it certainly would be a dreadful 
 thing thus resolutely to go forward toward it, 
 and a flagrantly absurd one thus to satisfy him- 
 self in doing so, if he had any such appalling 
 estimate of that future ruin as religious doctrine 
 affects to enforce; but that he believes this 
 threatening to be a prodigious exaggeration, — 
 we have only to reply, that, as he has not yet 
 seen the world of retribution, he is to take his 
 estimate of its awards from the declarations of 
 Him who knows what they are, and that it is at 
 his peril he assumes to entertain any other. If 
 any one answer to this, that he does not believe 
 in the existence of any such declarations, he is 
 not one of the persons we are meaning to address. 
 
 But some of you will make the supposed re- 
 ply— "What can we do?" in a less depraved 
 temper of feeling. We will suppose, that you 
 are not quite indifferent on the subject, that you 
 seriously admit the necessity of religion, that you 
 feel some uneasiness at your estrangement from 
 it, that, in short, you wish you could be religious, 
 and in this spirit somewhat despondingly put the 
 question. For you we have a plain short an- 
 swer; — indeed, we have anticipated this in some 
 preceding part of the discourse. You can de- 
 
TO MEX OF THE WORLD. 199 
 
 liberately apply yourselves to a serious, honest, 
 prolonged, repeated consideration of the subject. 
 Do not incur the shame, for one moment, of pre- 
 tending to doubt whether you can do this. On 
 any one of your worldly matters of importance, 
 you know that you can fix your thoughts atten- 
 tively, long and again ; you can severely examine 
 in what manner it is connected with your in- 
 terests, can weigh the reasons for and against, 
 and look forward to near and more distant con- 
 sequences. And you can do all this with re- 
 spect to religion. Do you allege that, the sub- 
 ject being a strange and hitherto foreign one to 
 your thoughts, and also presenting itself to you 
 with a disquieting and reproachful aspect, your 
 minds are strongly inclined to escape from be- 
 holding it ? What then ? You can think again 
 of the absolute necessity of considering it, and 
 can compel them back to confront it once more, 
 and still again. You can recollect that nothing 
 will be gained, and all will be lost, by ceasing to 
 think of it. You can reflect that, if you dismiss 
 it now, because it does not please you, it will in- 
 fallibly return upon you ere long to please you 
 still less; and will return ultimately in such im- 
 perative force, that it can no more be evaded or 
 dismissed. 
 
 Perhaps there may be some of you who will 
 complain, that, notwithstanding sincere and 
 
200 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 considerable efforts to this purpose, you find 
 that the subject does not, and seems as if it 
 would not take effectual hold on your spirits ; 
 that you cannot feel it to have that importance 
 which you know it to have. And what then ? 
 again we reply. Are you going to make this 
 a reason for suffering your minds to withdraw 
 from the subject and let it go — the subject which 
 cannot go without abandoning you to the do- 
 minion of death? The question, whether to 
 yield to this obstinate defect of sensibility, is the 
 critical point of your contest with the deadly 
 power of evil within you and without you. 
 Yield, and all will hasten to ruin. But, surely, 
 the terror of such a hazard and such an alter- 
 native, or the clear conviction at least that you 
 ought to feel terror at it, must incite you to per- 
 severing and more earnest efforts. Look at it, 
 dwell on it, and see whether a more protracted 
 and intense consideration of it will cause or suf- 
 fer your resolution to remit. That it should so 
 remit, is hardly conceivable of any rational be- 
 ing. But if it even did so remit, that circum- 
 stance itself would bring a new and frightful 
 phenomenon to rouse the spirit which had such 
 a consciousness, and excite it to call for all com- 
 passionate powers and agencies to come to its 
 rescue. 
 
 And here you are to be admonished, that you 
 
TO MEX OF THE WORLD. 201 
 
 cannot feel that you are faithfully making the 
 required exertion, unless you have recourse to 
 the most approved means for rendering it effec- 
 tual. You cannot answer it to God or your 
 conscience, that you are doing justice to your 
 souls, in this their dangerous crisis, unless you 
 have the resolution to withdraw yourselves as 
 much as possible from trifling company; to seize 
 from your secular occupations some portions of 
 your time for solemn thought ; to forego some 
 recreations, not perhaps sinful in themselves, for 
 the sake of employing the time on the most 
 pressing concern in all existence ; to read serious 
 books with an effort of your own to inculcate 
 their instructions on your minds ; but especially 
 to converse with the Word of Life itself. And 
 there is yet one more expedient, of obvious duty 
 and practicability, and superlative in efficacy. 
 You believe that the Almighty admits his crea- 
 tures, and indeed has with endless iteration in- 
 vited and commanded them, to express their ne- 
 cessities in petitions to him : and that he listens, 
 with peculiar favour, to applications for spiritual 
 good. You are not afraid to do this ; and you 
 are convinced on the strength of innumerable 
 promises, and of the merits and intercession of 
 Christ, that it would be successful. Though 
 there did not appear to be any immediate suc- 
 . cess, you believe, you absolutely know, that per- 
 
202 CONSIDERATIONS ADDRESSED 
 
 severing application to Heaven will finally pre- 
 vail. You can, with this absolute assurance, 
 implore the removal of that odious insensibility, 
 that indisposition, that aversion even, which you 
 allege as a discouragement from persisting to 
 apply yourselves to the all-important subject, 
 and feel as a temptation to turn away from it. 
 This can be done a thousand times over. It can 
 be done as long as the evil and the danger con- 
 tinue. And each day of their prolonged con- 
 tinuance supplies a stronger and still stronger 
 motive, to a more earnest use of the sovereign 
 expedient. And again and again we tell you, 
 that at each repetition you know, because God 
 has declared it, that such application cannot ul- 
 timately fail. Let this be done, and you are 
 victorious. And oh ! is it not worth while ? "i 
 Now, you must acknowledge that this is what 
 you can do. But what ! are we about to use a 
 language seeming to imply that you are reluctant 
 to acknowledge it ? What ! are we supposing 
 you would wish it rather proved that you cannot 
 perform this simple, efficacious, inestimable ser- 
 vice to your immortal spirits ? Is it possible, 
 that because the process of discipline is hard, 
 (it is confessedly so,) you would be willing to 
 find in its impracticability a deliverance from its 
 obligation — at the cost, the m inconceivable cost, 
 of losing its great object? Is your professed 
 
TO MEN OF THE WORLD. 203 
 
 thoughtfulness on the subject rather employed 
 in trying and feeling the state of your faculties, 
 to verify that there are invincible bonds of fate 
 around you, than in seeking the intervention of 
 that hand which can break all the bondage off? 
 Beware that, while you pretend a solicitude for 
 your eternal welfare, you be not, in fact, rather 
 seeking to make a melancholy provision against 
 the event of its failure, in the delusion of finding 
 a resource of extenuation in some mysterious 
 destiny, or the determination of the Almighty. 
 
 J F. 
 
 Bristol, September, 1825, 
 
 Printed by William Collins & Co., Glasgow. 
 
WORKS BY THOMAS DICK, LL.D. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHER; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE CONNECTION OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSO- 
 PHY WITH RELIGION. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH ENGRAVINGS. 
 
 Fine Edition, \2mo Cloth lettered, 8s. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION; 
 
 OB, 
 
 AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE MORAL LAWS OF THE 
 UNIVERSE. 
 
 Third Edition, 12 mo Cloth let'ered, 8s. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF A FUTURE STATE. 
 
 Third Edition, 12 mo Cloth lettered, Qs. 
 
 ON THE MENTAL ILLUMINATION AND MO- 
 RAL IMPROVEMENT OF MANKIND. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH ENGRAVINGS. 
 
 Fourth Thousand, \2mo Cloth lettered, 6s. 
 
 ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF SOCIETY, 
 BY THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH ENGRAVINGS. 
 
 Second Edition, l2mo Cloth, lettered, Is. Qd. 
 


 
 A 
 
 fit 
 
mill i 
 
 I IRRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 iHUfllMHHMl* 
 
 021 897 389 9]