gins her procession amidst admiring multitudes. Ere long, she defers her progress till the midnight watches, and steals unobserved upon the sleeping world. Sometimes she just enters the edges of the western horizon, and drops us a ceremonious visit. Within a while, she sets out on her nightly tour from the opposite regions of the east; traverses the whole hemisphere, and never offers to withdraw, till the more refulgent partner of her sway renders her presence unnecessary. In a word, she is, while conversant among us, still waxing or waning, and " never continueth in one stay."

Such is the moon, and such are all sublunary things exposed to perpetual vicissitudes. How often and how soon have the faint echoes of renown slept in silence, or been converted into the clamours of obloquy! The same lips, almost with the same breath, cry, Hosanna and Crucify!— Have not riches confessed their notorious treachery a thousand and a thousand times? Either melting away like snow in our hands, by insensible degrees, or escaping, like a winged prisoner from its cage, with a precipitate flight. Have we not known the bridegroom's closet an antichamber to the tomb; and heard the voice which so lately pronounced the sparkling pair husband and wife, proclaim an everlasting divorce? and seal the decree, with that solemn asseveration, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!"Our friends, though the medicine of life; our health, though the balm of nature, are a most precarious possession. How soon may the first become a corpse in our arms; and how easily is

the last destroyed in its vigour!-You have seen, no doubt, a set of pretty painted birds perching on your trees, or sporting in your meadows. You were pleased with the lovely visitants, that brought beauty on their wings, and melody in their throats. But could you insure the continuance of this agreeable entertainment? No, truly. At the least disturbing noise, at the least terrifying appearance, they start from their seats; they mount the skies, and are gone in an instant, are gone for ever. Would you choose to have a happiness which bears date with their arrival, and expires at their departure? If you could not be content with a portion, enjoyable only through such a fortuitous term, not of years, but of moments, O! take up with nothing earthly; set your affections on things above; there alone is no variableness or shadow of turning."

66

HERVEY.

THE

WORLD AND THE GOSPEL CONTRASTED.

BUT it may be said, Is the Gospel then that austere and gloomy system that commands us to renounce enjoyments naturally arising from social intercourse? No, my brethren; religion, being founded on benevolence, cannot be the enemy to any gratification that innocently contributes to the happiness of life. St. Paul expressly directs Christians to rejoice with those that rejoice, as well as weep with them that weep; and Jesus Christ himself, we know, was seated at the table

of the Pharisee, and sanctified by his presence the marriage feast of Cana. But we are not to confound what our rule clearly admits with what the temper of the world would suppose it to admit. Though it may, in a degree, lead to repetition, I will submit the difference in a word. Never to appear in society, but with a view to improvement and edification; never to keep up a single acquaintance the most distantly dangerous to our spiritual intercourse; never to cultivate friends, or even relatives, that are not religious and virtuous; never omit rendering, in the particular duties of our station, the means of salvation to ourselves and others: this is the Gospel. To neglect occupations the most sacred and important; to run indiscreetly, and without choice, into every circle that will admit us; to consume our precious time in idle visits and ceremonials; to live only in the confusion of night and day, amidst laborious amusements, that always end in inevitable disgust, that capital enemy, which we are eternally banishing and eternally calling up: this is the World. Inviolably to respect our superfluities as the patrimony of the poor; to be distinguished in high station, neither by too much magnificence nor too much simplicity, to regulate our train and expense invariably below our rank and revenues; to think more of decency than of lustre and show: this is the Gospel. To be swayed in those things, only by established fashion, however wild, extravagant, and contemptible; to labour who shall outdo the other in excessive and luxurious entertainments; to starve a family for a month in order to glitter for a night; to

exhibit with study and affectation brilliant and expensive baubles on the person, and the person without attire; and unthinkingly sacrifice to all vanity what our hearts incline us to devote to a more sacred purpose: this is the World. To take part in conversations only in which modesty has never to blush, in which reason has every thing to gain, and the sacred cause of religion and morality finds edification and support: this is the Gospel. To relish unintelligible jargon of mixed and tumultuous assemblies; to endeavour in all conversations rather to shine than to instruct; to high season it with the salt of sarcasm or slander; delicately and artificially to envelope the poison of impurity and corruption; to be silent from self-interest or complaisance, when religion is reviled by the impious and libertine ; perhaps, infamously join in the abuse of what we inwardly revere: this is the World. Never to engage in play, but on a scale the most moderate; or consider that, or any other allowable relaxation, but as the means of returning with recruited spirits to the performance of every social, public, and domestic duty: this is the Gospel. To render play an occupation and a traffic; a blind ungovernable passion, that lays us open to the arts and conspiracies of the more trained in the profession, that fills the soul with base and malignant affections, the feelings of avarice, the bitterness of envy; the rage that boils at loss and disappointment; nightly to grope for an object that engrosses every reflection of the mind, and every desire of the heart; that every instant, under the capricious empire of chance, produces

miserable shiftings of ecstasy and pain, and, under the law of polite manners, commands the torment of outward ease and countenance serene, when the storm is most violent and afflicting within this is the World. This is one of those precious pursuits to which it eagerly recurs for enjoyment, and would reconcile with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is unnecessary to pursue the contrast any farther.

KIRWAN.

THE WORLDLY MINDED MAN.

A MAN absorbed in a multitude of secular concerns, decent but unawakened, listens with a kind of respectful insensibility to the overtures of religion. He considers the church as venerable from her antiquity, and important from her connexion with the state. No one is more alive to her political, nor more dead to her spiritual importance. He is anxious for her existence, but indifferent to her doctrines. These he considers as a general matter, in which he has no individual concern. He considers religious observances as something decorous but unreal; as a grave custom made respectable by public usage and long prescription. He admits that the poor who have little to enjoy, and the idle who have little to do, cannot do better than make over to God that time which cannot be turned to a more profitable account. Religion, he thinks, may properly enough employ leisure, and occupy old age. But though both advance towards himself with imperceptible step, he is still at a loss to deter