the same day, poured out his money and his tears over the wounded officers, soldiers, and prisoners, with all the tenderness of an affectionate father, having expended of his own property, it is said, more than sixty thousand guineas, during the late war in Germany. What vices! What virtues! Springing from the same fertile soil in David, Solomon, and the M. of G. what but the true religion can weed out the former, and give the whole vigour of the soil to the latter, in men of this make? Never greater intrepidity was exemplified by any one man, nor a more melting tenderness of heart by any other man, than by the M. of G; but they met in his one breast a junction, rarely seen in any other, never in a degree so exalted. A lion in the morning, softened into a lamb in the evening, would hardly afford a more surprising sight. The skirt of Saul in the hand of David, and the purse of guineas in that of L. G. would almost persuade us, that they could never fall. But man when left to himself, is only a

man.

189. Before the times of Agesilaus and Lysander, when foreign conquests began to be affected at Lacedemon, and money to maintain armies must be acquired, a Spartan was exalted above the little weaknesses and pleasures of other men. The world with its pomps and allurements, were nothing to him. His soul, hard and firm, had nothing in it but the love of glory and his country. As he contemned pleasure, so he could in some instances enjoy pain. To him a very plain coat, and his mess of black broth were every thing. Such, in regard to this world, is a true Christian. But then his soul, vacant of earthly things, is filled with God and heaven. Transported with these, he scarcely feels sensual pleasure, or bodily pain. The dish, the bottle, and the harlot, have no hold of him; while the faggot and the flames only serve to elevate his raptured soul from vanity and vexation here, to endless joy and glory in the presence of his Father, Saviour, and Comforter. This world could not fill the soul of Alexander, or Cæsar; nor can it that of any other man. Somewhat more is still wanting to the soul, made for greater things. Christianity alone can supply this. When I see a man, high fed, and gorgeously attired, strutting in the pride of his foolish heart, I am apt, at first, to be seized with a mixture of pity and indignation, till I look inward, and find myself on the strut of that very pity and indignation. Here I sink to the same, or a lower species of worms, with the man I pitied.

190. Solve the following riddle, if you can. Who is he, with whom you are most intimate, and yet with whom you are hardly at all acquainted? Between whom and you there is the warmest love, and nevertheless a most dangerous enmity? Of whose understanding you have the highest opinion, whom nevertheless you have oftenest found to be a fool, if you are not a fool yourself? Who is he, whom preferably to all others, you most confide in, though, on most occasions, he does nothing but deceive and betray you? Who above all others wishes to save you, and yet almost incessantly labours to damn you? Who is he, that always checks you for your evil doings, and yet perpetually tempts you to repeat them? Who is he, that applauds you above your merits when you do any thing praiseworthy, and yet flatters you into vanity in doing an action, for which you ought to be ashamed? Who, whether you do well, or ill, is always at hand to help you? Who is he, that hath led you into all your troubles, although he always knew he must suffer his full share of them? Who is he, whom you know to be both a hero and a poltroon? Who is he, that would never suffer you to fix on any system of sound principles, but hath led you a wild goose chace of opinions, appetites, and passions, in pursuit of happiness, though you, all the time knew, or shrewdly suspected it must end in misery? Who is he, that perpetually invites you to eat, drink, sing, dance, and laugh with him to excess, and yet know he must, in consequence, at length sit down with you on Job's dunghill, to curse the day of his birth, and yours? Who is he, whom you believe to be a Christian, and a saint, but know to be rather an Atheist and a devil? This riddle is worded as to men, but is equally addressed to women. Whoever, of either sex, shall rightly solve it, shall have heaven for a reward.

191. For the sake of health, medicines are taken by weight and measure; so ought food to be, or by some similar rule. The quantity of food swallowed in the day, if above the demands of nature, is at first arbitrary, and soon becomes habitual. But any one by a week's perseverance, may break through the habit, as to somewhat more or less, and afterward will find very little trouble in proceeding on his newly adopted quantity, at least for a considerable length of time, especially if the quantity is less than the former.

192. There is a certain island, no matter whether in the South or North Sea, in which somewhat is observable, too common to

merit the name of a phenomenon, and yet perhaps deserving a place in natural history; it is this. Here a good many women, and some men, have a double weasand, or two wind-pipes a piece, which alternately perform the offices of inspiration and respiration; by which means, while they are talking out the air at one pipe, they are drawing in a fresh supply at the other. Hence it comes to pass, that one of those shall, for hours together, incessantly talk, without the stop of a single comma, or the infinitesimal of a second. The effect, in this case, so fully demonstrates the cause, that, to have recourse to anatomical inquiry for a proof here, is altogether superfluous. A young gentleman, of some address, was placed in the same drawing-room with five very respectable ladies, of this formation, who all talked to him at once, on different subjects, so rapidly, that he did not, at first, well know how to behave himself; but he soon fell into a method of attention that pleased them all. Fixing his eyes on a spot of the floor, as nearly central to them all as he could, he caught, in rotation, a little of what every one was saying, and adapted a word or two, pretty well, to the drift of the discourse, held by this or that lady-Certainly-No, no-Prodigious !-What?-Clever indeed!—Puppy.-Hah!-Sad jade!—Saucy-Ugly—Silly— upon her!-Horrid nose!-Monstrous!-Thus he went on for a good while, and as, towards the latter end, they grew a little satirical on their own sex, his interjections became inevitably acrimonious, by which he acquired the character of a well-bred man. The ladies liked this young gentleman the better, because probably they had never before that time been favoured with an audience so complaisant.

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193. A certain bishop, hearing that a countryman in his neighbourhood said, he had wind and weather at his will, sent for him. B. Do you say you have wind and weather at your will? C. M. I do, my lord. B. You do! I hope you are but a coxcomb. C. M. You, too, my lord, would have wind and weather at your will, if you were as good a man as I am. B. As you! C. M. It is some years since I found myself to be a fool. B. That is a contradiction, for he is a wise man, who hath found himself to be a fool. C. M. Wise man, or fool, I perceived that, if the wind and weather had been left to my ordering, I should have directed both but ill for myself, and worse for other people. I then considered the wisdom of God as a better director than my folly; so, from that time, I made the will of God my own in regard to wind

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and weather, and wish I could do the same in every thing else. When it rains, I say that is well, for it brings up the grass; when it snows, well too, for snow manures the ground; when it blows a storm, I cry, excellent! for that purges the air, and saves fifty thousand lives at land, for one it destroys at sea. This I said once, when the wind blew down my chimney, and hurt one of my arms. B. Well, go away; but don't make your silly neighbours believe you are a wizard. C. M. A wizard! no; but I have brought Tom Gate and George Snipe to think of wind and weather as I do. B. It was well done. Fare you well. C. M. Your lordship will not turn me out in so heavy a rain? B. What! is not that rain to your own will and wish? C. M. It is; for I am sure it is doing a great deal of good to mankind: but as I came out in a hurry, when it was fair, without my wide coat, so heavy a rain might do me some harm. B. John, take him down to a slice of bread and cheese, and a tankard of ale, till the shower is over.

194. Whether a man is regularly sent, or he of his own head takes upon him, to preach the gospel, he must basely forget what he is sent to do, or treacherously betray the cause he pretends to maintain, if he does not preach Christ Jesus, and him crucified for the sins of the world; if he does not strenuously hold forth faith in God the Father, through his only begotten Son Christ Jesus, the Saviour of mankind, as the sole spring of good works and virtue. His preaching what he calls morality, independent of this faith, is but blowing chaff and dust in the eyes of God's people. Morality, not grounded on religion, that is, on an expectation of a future account, and of rewards and punishments to follow that account, is nothing better than mere deception, is wholly without power; and without trust in the doctrine and death of the Redeemer, is in man a low and conceited dependence on himself, which must in the event deceive him. He knows nothing, who is not sensible that, of all animals, man is the least able to shift for himself, by far the least able to act up to the station he is in, the least able to draw from within himself the necessary resources of that virtue which is required of him by his Maker. But if he faithfully applies to his Maker for help, he quickly finds all the springs of his nature set at work by the true religion. He finds his hopes and fears called forth to the service of virtue, and these powerful engines of a wise self-love, exalted and dignified by gratitude, and love of God, into the noblest mo

tives of goodness towards him, and towards bis fellow-creatures. Panatius, Cicero, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, justly esteemed the greatest genii of the ages they lived in, detesting the gods, and despising the religion of the country, could not trust their systems of morality to either. They therefore were forced to draw their motives for moral virtue from human nature, as they found it. They pressed the beauty and utility of virtue, the deformity and misery of vice, with all the force of reason and eloquence, to a few readers, and to little purpose even among them. Human corruption proved too hard for their fine-spun reasonings. Strength was wanting on the side of virtue, for God was not called in, because the writers knew him not, nor how to have access to him. They had no Mediator with him, nor so much as a just pretence to plead his authority for their dictates. Seneca and Marcus Aurelius might possibly have availed themselves of Christianity for this purpose; but they held that religion in too much contempt, and were too full of themselves, to ground their moral systems on a religion, preached, for the most part, by men of low condition and of little learning. Long before their time, and indeed before Christ came into the world, Plato, some. how or other, had seen the necessity of a more competent instruction, to be sent from heaven, to teach mankind the knowledge of God, and of a true religion. But now that Christ hath come, and done all that Plato guessed at, and infinitely more, for our instruction and reformation, with irresistible proofs of his coming from God for this very purpose, should those who pretend to preach him and his religion, and live by that pretence, overlook him and his religion, as inattentively, as superciliously, as the other ancient philosophers did the seeming prediction of Plato, and preach up a sort of morality not founded on Christianity, what can we think of them? Of these men there can be very few so weak as to think of leading their hearers to Christianity by a morality so feeble as that which they hold forth by beginning at the wrong end of the work in hand. Ought they not to set out with the cause, in order to arrive at the effect? Can virtue be, to any purpose, inculcated, without first establishing the principles whereon it is to be built? As well may a stream run uphill towards its fountain. The rest, who moralize with no such view, in a manner vastly more futile than that of Cicero and Seneca, can be classed no where but in the lowest rank of infidels, as mere infidel deceivers. Are not the holy Scriptures the word of God?