It is not difficult to attract respect on gred

But if we may be allowed to glance from earth to heaven, perhaps the beauty of the lesser virtues may be still better illustrated by that long and luminous track made up of minute and almost imperceptible stars, which though separately too inconsiderable to attract attention, yet from their number and confluence, form that soft and shining stream of light every where discernable, and which always corresponds to the same fixed stars, as the smaller virtues do to their concomitant great ones.-Without pursuing the metaphor to the classic fiction that the Galaxy was the road through which the ancient heroes went to heaven, may we not venture to say that Christians will make their way thither more pleasant by the consistent practice of the minuter virtues ?

Every Christian should consider religion as a fort which he is called to defend. The meanest soldier in the army if he add patriotism to valour, will fight as earnestly as if the glory of the contest depended on his single arm. But he brings his watchfulness as well as his courage into action. He strenuously defends every pass he is appointed to guard, without inquiring whether it be great or small. There is not any defect in religion or morals so little as to be of no consequence. Worldly things may be little because their aim and end may be little. Things are great or small, not according to their ostensible importance, but according to the magnitude of their object, and the importance of their consequences.

The acquisition of even the smallest virtue being, as has been before observed, an actual conquest over the opposite vice, doubles our moral strength. The spiritual enemy has one object less, and the conqueror one virtue more.

By allowed negligence in small things, we are not aware how much we injure religion in the eye of the world. How can we expect people to believe that we are in earnest in great points, when they see that we cannot withstand a trivial temptation, against which resistance would have been comparatively easy? At a distance they hear with respect our general characters. They become domesticated with us, and discover the same failings, littleness, and bad tempers, as they have been accustomed to meet with in the most ordinary persons.

Our neglect of inferior duties is particularly injurious to the mind of our dependants and ser vants. If they see us weak and infirm of par pose,' peevish, irresolute, capricious, passionate, or inconsistent, in our daily conduct, which comes under their immediate observation, and which comes also within their power of judging, they will not give us credit for those higher qualities which we may possess, and those st perior duties which we may be more careful to fulfil. Neither their capacity nor their opportanities, may enable them to judge of the ortho doxy of the head; but there will be obvious and decisive proofs to the meanest capacity, of the state and temper of the heart. Our greater qualities will do them little good, while our lesser but incessant faults do them much injury. Seeing us so defective in the daily course of de mestic conduct, though they will obey us be cause they are obliged to it, they will neither love nor esteem us enough to be influenced by our advice, nor to be governed by our instruc tions, on those great points which every conscientious head of a family will be careful to inculcate on all about him. It demands no less circumspection to be a Christian than to be a hero, to one's valet de chambre.'

In all that relates to God and to himself the Christian knows of no small faults. He considers all allowed and wilful sins, whatever be their magnitude, as an offence against his Maker. Nothing that offends him can be insignifi. cant. Nothing that contributes to fasten on ourselves a wrong habit can be trifling. Faults which we are accustomed to consider as small are repeated without compunction. The habit of committing them is confirmed by the repeti tion. Frequency renders us at first indifferent, then insensible. The hopelessness attending a long indulged custom generates carelessness, till for want of exercise the power of resistance is first weakened, then destroyed.

what was once admired as proper spirit, never grow into pride, never swell into insolence? Does the habit of incorrect narrative, or loose talking, or allowed hyperbole, never lead to falsehood; never settle in deceit? Before we positively determine that small faults are innocent, we must undertake to prove that they shall never outgrow their primitive dimensions; we

Procrastination is reckoned among the most venial of our faults, and sits so lightly on our minds that we scarcely apologize for it. But who can assure us, that had not the assistance we had resolved to give to one friend under disress, or the advice to another under temptation, o-day, been delayed, and from mere sloth and indolence been put off till to-morrow, it might not have preserved the fortunes of the one, or saved the soul of the other?

It is not enough that we perform duties; we must perform them at the right time.-We must do the duty of every day in its own season. Every day has its own imperious duties; we must not depend upon to-day for fulfilling those which we neglected yesterday, for to-day might not have been granted us. To-morrow will be equally peremptory in its demands; and the succeeding day, if we live to see it, will be ready with its proper claims.

Indecision, though it is not so often caused by reflection as by the want of it, yet may be as mischievous; for if we spend too much time in balancing probabilities, the period for action is lost. While we are ruminating on difficulties which may never occur, reconciling differences which perhaps do not exist, and poising in opposite scales things of nearly the same weight, the opportunity is lost of producing that good which a firm and manly decision would have effected.

Idleness, though itself the most unperforming of all the vices,' is however the pass through which they all enter, the stage on which they all act. Though supremely passive itself, it lends a willing hand to all evil, practical as well as speculative. It is the abettor of every sin whoever commits it, the receiver of all booty, whoever is the thief. If it does nothing itself, it connives at all the mischief that is done by others. Vanity is exceedingly misplaced when ranked as she commonly is, in the catalogue of small faults. It is under her character of harmlessness that she does all her mischief. She is indeed often found in the society of great virtues. She does not follow in the train, but mixes herself with the company, and by mixing mars it. The use our spiritual enemy makes of her is a master stroke. When he cannot prevent us from doing right actions, he can accomplish his purpose almost as well by making us vain of them.' When he cannot deprive the public of our benevolence, he can defeat the effect to our selves by poisoning the principle. When he cannot rob others of the good effect of the deed, he can gain his point by robbing the doer of his reward.

Peevishness is another of the minor miseries. Human life, though sufficiently unhappy, cannot contrive to furnish misfortunes so often as the passionate and the peevish can supply impatience. To commit our reason and temper to the mercy of every acquaintance, and of every servant, is not making the wisest use of them. If we recollect that violence and peevishness are the common resource of those whose knowledge is small, and whose arguments are weak, our very pride might lead us to subdue our passion,

Anger is the common refuge of insignificance. People who feel their character to be slight, hope to give it weight by inflation: but the blown bladder at its fullest distention is still empty. Sluggish characters, above all, have no right to be passionate. They should be contented with their own congenial faults. Dullness however has its impetuosities and its fluctuations as well as genius. It is on the coast of heavy Boeotia that the Euripus exhibits its unparalleled restlessness and agitation.

Trifling is ranked among the venial faults. But if time be one grand talent given us in order to our securing eternal life; if we trifle away that time so as to lose that eternal life, on which by not trifling we might have laid hold, then will it answer the end of sin. A life devoted to trifles not only takes away the inclination, but the capacity for higher pursuits. The truths of Christianity have scarcely more influence on a frivolous than on a profligate character. If the mind be so absorbed, not merely with what is vicious, but with what is useless, as to be thoroughly disinclined to the activities of a life of piety, it matters little what the cause is which so disinclines it. If these habits cannot be accused of great moral evil, yet it argues a low state of mind; that a being who has an eternity at stake can abandon itself to trivial pursuits. If the great concern of life cannot be secured without habitual watchfulness, how is it to be secured by habitual carelessness? It will afford little comfort to the trifler, when at the last reckoning he gives in his long negative catalogue, that the more ostensible offender was worse employed. The trifler will not be weighed in the scale with the profligate, but in the balance of the sanctuary.

Some men make for themselves a sort of code of the lesser morals, of which they settle both the laws and the chronology. They fix the climacterics of the mind;'* determine at what period such a vice may be adopted without discredit, at what age one bad habit may give way to another more in character. Having settled it as a matter of course, that to a certain age certain faults are natural, they proceed to act as if they thought them necessary.

But let us not practice on ourselves the gross imposition to believe that any failing, much less any vice, is necessarily appended to any state or any age, or that it is irresistible at any. We may accustom ourselves to talk of vanity and extravagance as belonging to the young; and avarice and peevishness to the old, till the next step will be that we shall think ourselves justified in adopting them. Whoever is eager to find excuses for vice and folly, will feel his own backwardness to practise them much diminished.

C'est le premier pas qui coute. It is only to make out an imaginary necessity, and then we easily fall into the necessity we have imagined. Providence has established no such association. There is, it is true, more danger of certain faults under certain circumstances; and some temptations are stronger at some periods: but it is a

Dr. Johnson.

proof that they are not irresistible because all do not fall into them. The evil is in ourselves, who mitigate the discredit by the supposed necessity. The prediction, like the dream of the astrologer, creates the event instead of foretelling it. But there is no supposition can be made of a bad case which will justify the making it our own: Nor will general positions ever serve for individual apologies.-Who has not known persons who, though they retain the sound health and vigour of active life, sink prematurely into sloth and inactivity, solely on the ground that these dispositions are fancied to be unavoidably incident to advancing years. They demand the indulgence before they feel the infirmity. Indolence thus forges a dismission from duty before the discharge is issued out by Providence. No.-Let us endeavour to meet the evils of the several conditions and periods of life with submission, but it is an offence to their divine dispenser to forestall them.

But we have still a saving clause for ourselves, whether the evil be of greater or lesser magnitude. If the fault be great, we lament the inability to resist it; if small, we deny the importance of so doing, we plead that we cannot withstand a great temptation, and that a small one is not worth withstanding. But if the temptation or the fault be great, we should resist it on account of that very magnitude; if small, the giving it up can cost but little; and the conscientious habit of conquering the less will confer considerable strength towards subduing the greater.

There is again, a sort of splendid character, which, winding itself up occasionally to certain shining actions, thinks itself fully justified in breaking loose from the shackles of restraint in smaller things; it makes no scruple to indemnify itself for these popular deeds by indulgences which, though allowed, are far from innocent. It thus secures to itself praise and popularity by what is sure to gain it, and immunity from censure in indulging the favourite fault, practically exclaiming, Is it not a little one?'

Vanity is at the bottom of almost all, may we not say, of all our sins? We think more of signalizing than of saving ourselves. We overlook the hourly occasions which occur of serving, of obliging, of comforting those around us, while we sometimes, not unwillingly perform an act of notorious generosity. The habit, however, in the former case, better indicates the disposition and bent of the mind, than the solitary act of splendor. The apostle does not say whatsoever great things ye do, but 'whatsoever things ye do, do all to the glory of God.' Actions are less weighed by their bulk than their motive. Virtues are less measured by their splendor than their principle. The racer proceeds in his course more effectually by a steady unslackened pace, than by starts of violent but unequal exertion.

That great abstract of moral law, of which we have elsewhere spoken,* that rule of the highest court of appeal, set up in his own bosom, to which every man can always resort, all things that ye would that men should do unto

* Chapter ix.

·

you, do ye also unto them :-This law, if faith. fully obeyed, operating as an infallible remedy for all the disorders of self-love, would, by throw. ing its partiality into the right scale, establish the right exercise of all the smaller virtues. Its strict observance would not only put a stop to all injustice, but to all unkindness: not only to oppressive acts, but to unfeeling language. Even haughty looks and supercilious gestures would be banished from the face of society, did we ask ourselves how we should like to receive what we are not ashamed to give.

Till we thus morally transmute place, person, and circumstance with those of our brother, we shall never treat him with the tenderness this gracious law enjoins. Small virtues and small offences are only so by comparison. To treat a fellow-creature with harsh language, is not indeed a crime like robbing him of his estate or destroying his reputation. They are, however, all the offspring of the same family. They are the same in quality though not in degree. All flow, though in streams of different magnitude, from the same fountain; all are indications of a departure from that principle which is included in the law of love. The consequences they involve are not less certain; though they are less important.

The reason why what are called religious people often differ so little from others in small trials is, that instead of bringing religion to their aid in their lesser vexations, they either leave the disturbance to prey upon their minds, or apply to false reliefs for its removal. Those who are rendered unhappy by frivolous troubles, seek comfort in frivolous enjoyments. But we should apply the same remedy to ordinary trials, as to great ones; for as small disquietudes spring from the same cause as great trials, namely, the uncertain and imperfect condition of human life, so they require the same remedy. Meeting common cares with a right spirit would impart a smoothness to the temper, a spirit of cheerfulness to the heart, which would mightily break

the force of heavier trials.

You apply to the power of religion in great evils.-Why does it not occur to you to apply to it in the less? Is it that you think the instrument greater than the occasion demands ? It is not too great if the lesser one will not produce the effect, or if it produce it in the wrong way; for there is such a thing as putting an evil out of sight without curing it. You would apply to religion on the loss of your child-ap ply to it on the loss of your temper. Throw in this wholesome tree to swecten the bitter waters. As no calamity is too great for the power of Christianity to mitigate, so none is too small to experience its beneficial results. Our behaviour under the ordinary accidents of life forms a characteristic distinction between different classes of Christians. The least advanced, resort to religion on great occasions; the deeper proficient resorts to it on all. What makes it appear of so little comparative value is, that the medicine prepared by the Great Physician is thrown by instead of being taken. The patient thinks not of it but in extreme cases. A remedy, however potent, not applied, can produce no effect. But The who has adopted one fixed principle for the

hurts not him who flatters not himself. If we examined our motives keenly, we should frequently blush at the praises our actions receive. Let us then conscientiously inquire not only what we do, but whence and why we do it, from what motive and to what end.

That deep thinker and acute reasoner, Dr. Barrow, has remarked that it is a peculiar excellency of human nature, and which distinguishes man from the inferior creatures more than bare reason itself, that he can reflect upon all that is done within him, can discern the tendencies of his soul, and is acquainted with his own purposes.'

This distinguishing faculty of self-inspection would not have been conferred on man, if it had not been intended that it should be in habitual operation. It is surely, as we before observed, as much a common law of prudence, to look well to our spiritual as to our worldly possessions. We have appetites to control, imaginations to restrain, tempers to regulate, passions to subdue; and how can this internal work be effected, how can our thoughts be kept within due bounds, how can a proper bias be given to the affections, how can the little state of man' be preserved from continual insurrection, how can this restraining power be maintained if this capacity of discerning, if this faculty of inspecting be not kept in regular exercise? Without constant discipline, imagination will become an outlaw, conscience an attainted rebel. This inward eye, this power of introversion. is given us for a continual watch upon the soul. On an unremitted vigilance over its interior motions, those fruitful seeds of action, those prolific principles of vice and virtue, will depend both the formation and the growth of our moral and religious character. A superficial glance is not enough for a thing so deep, an unsteady view will not suffice for a thing so wavering, nor a casual look for a thing so deceitful as the human heart. A partial inspection on any one side, will not be enough for an object which must be observed under a variety of aspects, because it is always shifting its positions, always changing its appearances.

Self-inspection is the only means to preserve us from self-conceit. We could not surely so very extravagantly value a being whom we ourselves should not only see, but feel to be so full of faults. Self-acquaintance will give us a far more deep and intimate knowledge of our own errors than we can possibly have, with all the inquisitiveness of an idle curiosity, of the errors of others. We are eager enough to blame them without knowing their motives. We are no less eager to vindicate ourselves, though we cannot be entirely ignorant of our own. Thus two virtues will be acquired by the same act, humility and candour; an impartial review of our own infirmities, being the likeliest way to make us tender and compassionate to those of others.

Nor shall we be liable so to overrate our own judgment when we perceive that it often forms such false estimates, is so captivated with trifles, so elated with petty successes, so dejected with little disappointments. When we hear others commend our charity which we know is so cold; when others extol our piety which we feel to be so dead; when they applaud the energies of our faith, which we must know to be so faint and feeble, we cannot possibly be so intoxicated with the applause which never would have been given, had the applauder known us as we know, or ought to know ourselves. If we contradict him, it may be only to draw on ourselves the imputation of a fresh virtue, humility, which perhaps we as little deserve to have ascribed to us as that which we have been renouncing. If we keep a sharp look out, we should not be proud of praises which cannot apply to us, but should rather grieve at the involuntary fraud of imposing on others, by tacitly accepting a character to which we have so little real pretension. To be delighted at finding that people think so much better of us than we are conscious of deserving, is in effect to rejoice in the success of our own deceit.

Did we turn our thoughts inward, it would abate much of the self-complacency with which

It is evident then, that to live at random, is not the life of a rational, much less of an immortal, least of all, of an accountable being. To pray occasionally, without deliberate course of prayer; to be generous without proportioning our means to our expenditure; to be liberal without a principle; to let the mind float on the current of public opinion; lie at the mercy of events, for the probable occurrence of which we have made no provision; to be every hour liable to death without any habitual preparation for it; to carry within us a principle which we believe will exist through all the countless ages