OF SLANDER.

THIS crime is a conjugation of evils, and is productive of infinite mischiefs it undermines peace, and saps the foundation of friendship it destroys families, and rends in pieces the very heart and vital parts of charity: it makes an evil man party, and witness, and judge, and executioner of the innocent.

OF FLATTERY.

He that persuades an ugly deformed man that he is handsome— a short man that he is tall-a bald man that he hath a good head of hair-makes him become ridiculous and a fool, but does no other mischief. But he that persuades his friend, that is a goat in his manners, that he is a holy and a chaste person, or that his looseness is a sign of a quick spirit, or that it is not dangerous, but easily pardonable, a trick of youth, a habit that old age will lay aside, as a man pares his nails,—this man hath given great advantage to his friend's mischief: he hath made it grow in all the dimensions of the sin, till it grows intolerable, and perhaps unpardonable. And, let it be considered, what a fearful destruction and contradiction of friendship or service it is, so to love myself and my little interest, as to prefer it before the soul of him whom I ought to love.

OF COMFORTING THE DISCONSOLATE.

CERTAIN it is, that as nothing can better do it, so there is nothing greater, for which God made our tongues, next to reciting his praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul. And what greater measure can we have, than that we should bring joy to our brother, who with his dreary eyes looks to heaven and round about, and cannot find so much rest as to lay his eyelids close together than that thy tongue should be tuned with heavenly accents, and make the weary soul to listen for light and ease, and, when he perceives that there is such a thing in the world, and in the order of things, as comfort and joy, to begin to break out from the prison of his sorrows at the door of sighs and tears, and by little and little melt into showers and refreshment? This is glory to thy voice, and employment fit for the brightest angel. But so

have I seen the sun kiss the frozen earth, which was bound up with the images of death, and the colder breath of the north; and then the waters break from their enclosures, and melt with joy, and run in useful channels; and the flies do rise again from their little graves in walls, and dance awhile in the air, to tell that there is joy within, and that the great mother of creatures will open the stock of her new refreshment, become useful to mankind, and sing praises to her Redeemer. So is the heart of a sorrowful man under the discourses of a wise comforter; he breaks from the despairs of the grave, and the fetters and chains of sorrow; he blesses God, and he blesses thee, and he feels his life returning; for to be miserable is death, but nothing is life but to be comforted; and God is pleased with no music from below so much as in the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows, of supported orphans, of rejoicing and comforted, and thankful persons.

THE PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.

THE canes of Egypt, when they newly arise from their bed of mud and slime of Nilus, start up into an equal and continual length, and are interrupted but with few knots, and are strong and beauteous, with great distances and intervals; but when they are grown to their full length they lessen into the point of a pyramis, and multiply their knots and joints, interrupting the fineness and smoothness of its body. So are the steps and declensions of him that does not grow in grace: at first when he springs up from his impurity, by the waters of baptism and repentance, he grows straight and strong, and suffers but few interruptions of piety, and his constant courses of religion are but rarely intermitted, till they ascend up to a full age, or towards the ends of their life; then they are weak, and their devotions often intermitted, and their breaches are frequent, and they seek excuses, and labor for dispensations, and love God and religion less and less, till their old age, instead of a crown of their virtue and perseverance, ends in levity and unprofitable courses; light and useless as the tufted feathers upon the cane, every wind can play with it and abuse it, but no man can make it useful. When, therefore, our piety in

terrupts its greater and more solemn expressions, and upon the return of the greater offices and bigger solemnities we find them to come upon our spirits like the wave of a tide, which retired only because it was natural so to do, and yet came farther upon the strand at the next rolling; when every new confession-every succeeding communion-every time of separation, far more solemn and intense prayer is better spent, and more affectionate, leaving a greater relish upon the spirit, and possessing greater portions of our affections, our reason, and our choice; then we may give God thanks, who hath given us more grace to use that grace, and a blessing to endeavor our duty, and a blessing upon our endeavor.*

Every man hath his indiscretions and infirmities, his arrests and sudden incursions, his neighborhoods and semblances of sin, his little violences to reason, and peevish melancholy, and humorous fantastic discourses; unaptness to a devout prayer, his fondness to judge favorably in his own cases, little deceptions, and voluntary and involuntary cozenages, ignorances and inadvertences, careless hours, and unwatchful seasons. This happens more frequently in persons of an infant-piety, when the virtue is not corroborated by a long abode, and a confirmed resolution, and an usual victory, and a triumphant grace; and the longer we are accustomed to piety, the more unfrequent will be the little breaches of folly, and a returning to sin. But as the needle of a compass, when it is directed to its beloved star, at the first addresses waves on either side, and seems indifferent in his courtship of the rising or declining sun, and when it seems first determined to the north, stands awhile trembling, as if it suffered inconvenience in the first fruition of its desires, and stands not still in full enjoyment till after first a great variety of motion, and then an undisturbed posture; so is the piety, and so is the conversion of a man, wrought by degrees and several steps of imperfection; and at first our choices are wavering, convinced by the grace of God, and yet not persuaded; and then persuaded, but not resolved; and then resolved, but deferring to begin; and then beginning, but, as all beginnings are, in weakness and uncertainty; and we fly out often into huge

* Of Growth in Grace; serm. xiv., p. 305.

indiscretions, and look back to Sodom and long to return to Egypt: and when the storm is quite over, we find little bubblings and unevennesses upon the face of the waters, we often weaken our own purposes by the returns of sin and we do not call ourselves conquerors, till by the long possession of virtues it is a strange and unusual, and therefore an uneasy and unpleasant thing, to act a crime.*

AMBITION.

I HAVE read of a fair young German gentleman, who living, often refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity of his friends' desire by giving way that after a few days' burial, they might send a painter to his vault, and, if they saw cause for it, draw the image of his death unto the life. They did so, and found his face half eaten, and his midriff and back bone full of serpents; and so he stands pictured among his armed ancestors. So does the fairest beauty change, and it will be as bad with you and me; and then, what servants shall we have to wait upon us in the grave? what friends to visit us? what officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our funeral.

St. Austin with his mother Monica was led one day by a Roman Prætor to see the tomb of Cæsar. Himself thus describes the corpse, "It looked of a blue mould, the bone of the nose laid bare, the flesh of the nether lip quite fallen off, his mouth full of worms, and in his eye pit a hungry toad feasting upon the remnant portion of flesh and moisture: and so he dwelt in his house of darkness."+

* Of Growth of Sin; part ii., serm. xvii.

† See Tucker's Light of Nature, vol. v., chap. 9, where there is an interesting inquiry upon the distinction between the love of excelling and the love of excellence: where, with his usual ingenuity, he examines the question.

"Nevertheless it will probably be asked, would I then extinguish every spark of vanity in the world? every thirst of fame, of splendor, of magnificence, of show? every desire of excelling or distinguishing one's self above

Virtue hath not half so much trouble in it, it sleeps quietly without startings and affrighting fancies, it looks cheerfully, smiles with much serenity, and though it laughs not often, yet it is ever delightful in the apprehensions of some faculty it fears no man, nor no thing, nor is it discomposed, and hath no concernments in the great alterations of the world, and entertains death like a friend, and reckons the issues of it as the greatest of its

the common herd? what must become of the public services, of sciences, arts, commerce, manufactures? the business of life must stagnate. Nobody would spend his youth in fatigues and dangers to qualify himself for a general or an admiral. Nobody would study, and toil, and struggle, and roar out liberty to be a minister."

If Tucker is right, and he generally is right, in his opinions, the love of excelling, although the common motive of action, does not influence the noblest minds; is only a temporary motive, and generates bad passion: but the love of excellence is a powerful motive is a permanent motive, and generates good feeling is always ready to forward those abilities which overpower its own. If Tucker's reasoning is not satisfactory, let him consider the words of Lord Bacon.

:

"We enter into a desire of knowledge sometimes from a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain our minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; sometimes to enable us to victory of wit and contradiction, and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of our gift of reason, for the benefit and use of man :-as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate." · For our undertaking, we judge it of such a nature, that it were highly unworthy to pollute it with any degree of ambition or affectation; as it is an unavoidable decree with us ever to retain our native candor and simplicity, and not attempt a passage to truth under the conduct of vanity; for seeking real nature with all her fruits about her, we should think it a betraying of our trust to infect such a subject either with an ambitious, or ignorant, or any other faulty manner of treating it." See Sidney Smith's sermon, vol. ii., page 129, on Vanity.

..

In Whitaker's History of Craven, when examining the tombs in the church of Skipton, he says: "Here lies the body of George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland of that family, and knight of the most noble order of the garter, who, by right of inheritance from a long continued descent of ancestors, was Lord Veteripont, Baron Clifford, Westmorland, and Vesey,