luftre to intrinfic worth, and thus render it more amiable,

Benevolence and philanthropy is a fourth good property, a fourth virtue, which we should carry with us and practise in focial life; envy and coldness on the other hand, or flattery and affected fenfibility, compose a fourth clafs of the faults we fhould there avoid. And in fact, my pious hearers, would you receive pleasure from the countenance of your brethren and from your converse with them; you must rejoice in their welfare and prosperity. Otherwise every better quality you perceive in them, every mark of approbation conferred on them by others, every praife they obtain must give you uneafinefs. Is it expedient that your intercourse with them fhould be neither irksome nor painful, would you fupport it with pleasure, you muft take an interest in all that relates to them ; you fhould not be indifferent to whatever befalls them, whether good or bad; you muft rejoice with the joyful and weep with the weeping. Would you procure fuftenance and employment for your heart by your converse with others: you must expand it to the feelings of humanity and friendship; you must let it be animated by correspondent estimation and love; felf-intereft, felf-love, milanthropy must be eradicated from it. Coldness, indifferency, infenfibility, envy, hatred, are the death of all focial pleasures; are what constantly more or lefs impair and weaken these fatisfactions, and are the

caufes

causes that difguft and difpleafure and languor fo often prevail in fociety.

But in avoiding these mistakes, take care not to boast of difpofitions which are foreign to you, or to testify a fenfibility which you do not poffefs. Seek not to compenfate the defects of your benevolence and affection by the bafe arts of flattery. Put not on the femblances of gladness or forrow, while your heart neither feels the one nor the other. Accoft not with pretended friendship those from whom your heart is averfe. Feign not to fhed tears of compaffion, of fympathy, of joy, or of tenderness. Be not lavish in particular protestations of friendship to any man that is not the friend of your foul, the confident of your heart. Rarely can artifice conceal the defects of nature and the want of veracity; and people in general would rather you let your coldness appear, than be duped by the affectation of a cordial concern. Would you avoid these errors, my pious hearers; be christians, for the christian is actuated by unfeigned love; that is the prime motive of all he thinks and fpeaks and does.

Affability is a fifth good quality, which we should bring and employ in focial life; loquacity on the contrary a fifth failing which we fhould avoid. The affable man entertains, the loquacious confounds. The former fpeaks with reflection, and felects the most profitable and agreeable from what he has to fay the latter delivers everything that

comes

comes into his mind without confideration or choice, and fhakes out his wallet of good things and bad, proper and improper, windỳ conceits and stupid dreams, in every man's face he meets. The former actually converses with others, and hearkens when they speak with the fame attention he, in his turn, requires from them: the latter is constantly talk. ing, never has time to hear, and his perpetual torrent of words rufhes over all, like a deluge, depriving the intelligent of the defire and the opportunity to speak, and both the wife and the unwife of all power to hear. The former in fhort, knows the fit time for holding his tongue, and is not ashamed of his filence: the other had rather have recourse to idle reports, or flander, or lies, than allow himself to be robbed of the imaginary honour of poffeffing an inexhaustible fund of enter

tainment.

Strive therefore to maintain and heighten the pleasures of fociety by a rational and discreet affabi. lity; but do not heedlessly spoil them by loquacity. Learn to hear as well as to fpeak. Diftinguish your. self more by the truth, the justness, the moral goodness of what you fay, by the delicacy of your remarks, and the fit manner in which you produce them, than by the redundant verbofity, and stupifying vehemence of your fpeech. Let your difcourfes be feasoned with falt, according to the precept of the apostle; let them be always inoffenfive, conducive to edification, and conftantly fo ordered,

that

that the claims of truth, of virtue, of religion, of christianity, be never infringed. Be not diftreffed in those moments when the vivacity of converfation gives place to profound filence, frequently unavoidable, and often fo falutary to the fupport and improvement of reflection. Rather fubmit to the reproach of unsociableness, or of poverty in materials of entertainment, than escape this reproach at the expense of truth or humanity, of virtue or de

corum.

Mirth, harmless, temperate mirth, is a fixth good quality which we should carry with us into focial life, and put in practice there; diffolute merriment, on the other hand, and extravagant jollity, is a fixth fault we have to avoid. The former, decent mirth, recreates and confirms both the health of the mind and that of the body; it is really recreation; is even worthy of the wife man and the christian; and gives to whatever is spoken or tranfacted an agreeable aspect, a heightened value: the other, diffolute mirth, enervates and perplexes the mind, frequently distorts the body, commonly debases the character, excludes every finer and more generous fatisfaction, corrupts the tafte, and leaves nothing behind but confufion and wild uproar.

Avoid these faults, and acquire these good qua lities, if you would give and receive much real pleasure in focial life. Let ferenity accompany vou in the fociety of your brethren; let gaiety and cheerfulness

cheerfulness animate you there; let inoffensive wit and harmless raillery feafon your conversation; enjoy legitimate and innoxious mirth. But enjoy them with prudent moderation. Beware of every thing that benumbs your reason, that deprives you of the consciousness of yourself and the respect that is due to others, of everything that distreffes others or degrades them in their own eyes, of everything that is in oppofition to the dignity of the man and the christian. Rejoice in the Lord alway; that is, constantly so as becomes a chriftian. Only that cheerfulness which is confiftent with the thoughts of God and your duty, and which you will reflect upon with pleasure in the filence of retirement, or at least in your hours of lonely meditation will not be a cause of regret; only this cheerfulness fhould be approved, fought after, enjoyed and with all diligence cultivated by you.

If, my pious hearers, we take with us these good qualities, these virtues, into focial life, and exercife them there, at the fame time avoiding their oppofite defects; if therefore fincerity and franknefs, but not indifcretion and rudenefs; dignified freedom, but not licentiousness and arrogance; graceful, refined, and agreeable manners, but not foppery, affectation and incivility; benevolence and philanthropy, but not coldness and jealoufy, or flattery and artificial sensibility; affability but not garrulity; mirth, but not licentiousness; prevail in focial life: then certainly it has a great value,