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thising with your companions is next affected; their success is your defeat, their gain your loss; their superiority is a stumbling-block in the way of your preferment, their inferiority a stepping-stone to your progress :you cannot cordially love, and desire to assist, the rivals you are straining every nerve to overcome and throw into the shade. I have your own testimony as to the tendency of rivalry to produce impatience and irritability; alas! in its maturity, it bears even deadlier fruit,"clusters of gall"-hatred! envy! strife! and revenge! You probably work very diligently, my dear, nay, unless, the one holy motive of action, recognition of God, were to stimulate you, your energies would probably flag, and every other excitement would in comparison be as cold water after an ardent cordial. But is there not inherent weakness in every principle which depends for exercise upon external agency? which is not sufficient for itself at once as a motive and a reward? Now this longing after pre-eminence depends for its very existence on opinion, the opinion of every one

who comes in contact with you; a breath creates from these opinions a bubble of triumph, but the same breath can also dissipate the bubble, and then you are left to a resourceless void. Again, if you are thus dependent upon opinion for happiness, it must necessarily be unstable; for the suffrages that might content you at one time, will not at another; the rainbow recedes as you follow it; alas! it fades too: that which appeared an eminence before you climbed it, when climbed appears a mole-hill; what seems a star sparkling in a mossy hall, attracts your eye, you run towards the bank and return with a tiny worm! To be the accredited head of your twelve schoolfellows would now content you, and like a miniature Wolsey, you would say, "I've touched the highest point of all my greatness," but if a thirteenth appeared, superior to yourself, your past honour would be worthless, and you must recommence the old course of strife, anxiety, and emulation. My dear

fancy yourself a woman, and in the world, actuated by your present motives and

desires, just as ardent for pre-eminence, and just as sensitive to opinion. You will be incapable of any deep affection, because characters will solely be estimated by one standard their appreciation of yourself. Friends will be sought and retained merely as they minister to your gratification.

Simplicity

and sincerity must be undermined. You will give praise in order to receive it back. You will pay attention, and study to be agreeable, and adapt yourself to your society, and form, or at least avow your sentiments, -do, in short, every thing, less from natural interest, and consciousness of right, than from perpetual reference to the effect which pleasing others will have upon their opinion of you. Your very sacrifices will " partake of the nature of the selfishness they appear to renounce." The re-action-the receiving as much again-will form in all things the main matter of consideration. In duty, even in Christian duty, the eye of man will fearfully supersede the presence of God. You will strive most willingly against those sins and habits which most

affect your estimation in the sight of others; you will engage most heartily in those occupations which bring with them the present and palpable reward of human praise-that well-named "opiate of the heart," the powerful stimulus of a season, which

exerts eventually a benumbing, deadening, deadly influence. But I hope better things for you, my love; things which accompany salvation only seriously consider your feelings, not merely in their present operation, but in their future tendency; and oh! beseech God to give you ability and willingness to desire the honour that cometh from Him; the glory that results from His favour; the fulness of joy which springs from His approbation, even when unaccompanied by the approbation of man. Oh ! that the day may come to you, and to myself, wherein we shall be able to feel, from the inmost soul, "He is our praise;" when we shall faithfully lay at his footstool that choicest gem, our estimation in the sight of others, and say, with sincerity, "There Lord, that is thine.

It is thou

I

hast given us power to get this wealth; not unto us, not unto us, but unto thee, and to thy grace be all the honour and glory."

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