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part of those we meet with are employed. In what is it that their thoughts are busied, their views, their hopes, and their fears centred, their attention occupied, their hearts, and souls, and affections engaged; is it in searching the Scriptures, in meditating on its doctrines, its precepts, its exhortations, its promises, and its threats? Is it in communing with their own hearts, in probing them to the very bottom, in looking carefully whether there be any way of wickedness in them, in plucking out every noxious weed, and leaving room for the good seed to grow and swell and expand itself, and bring forth fruit to perfection? Is it in cultivating purity of manners, a spirit of charity, towards the whole human race, and the most exalted sentiments of piety, gratitude, and love, towards their Maker and Redeemer? These, I fear, are far from being the general and principal occupations of mankind. Too many of them are, God knows, very differently employed. They are overwhelmed with business, they are devoted to amusement, they are immersed in sensuality, they are mad with ambition, they are idolaters of wealth, of power, of glory, of fame. On these things all their affections are fixed. These are the great objects of their pursuit; and if any accidental thought of religion happens to cross their way, they instantly dismiss the unbidden, unwelcome guest, with the answer of Felix to Paul-"Go thy way for this time; when we have a convenient season we will send for thee."

But how then, it is said, are we to conduct ourselves? If Providence has blessed us with riches, with honour, with power, with reputation,

are we to reject these gifts of our heavenly Father; or ought we not rather to accept them with thankfulness, and enjoy with gratitude the advantages and the comforts which his bounty has bestowed upon us? Most assuredly we ought. But then they are to be enjoyed also with innocence, with temperance, and with moderation. They must not be allowed to usurp the first place in our hearts; they must not be permitted to supplant God in our affection, or to dispute that preeminence and priority which he claims over every propensity of our nature. This and this only can prevent the good seed from being choked with the cares, the riches, and the pleasures of the present life.

BISHOP PORTEUS.

OF SELF-DECEPTION, AND THE
DANGER OF IT.

Or self-deceit, in the great business of our lives, there are various modes. The far greater part of mankind deceive themselves by willing negligence, by refusing to think on their real state, lest such thoughts should trouble their quiet or interrupt their pursuits. To live religiously, is to walk, not by sight, but by faith; to act in confidence of things unseen, in hope of future recompense, and in fear of future punishment. abstract the thoughts from things spiritual is not difficult; things future do not obtrude themselves upon the senses, and therefore easily give way to external objects. He that is willing to forget religion may quickly lose it; and that most men

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are willing to forget it, experience informs us. If we look into the gay or the busy world, we see every eye directed towards pleasure or advantage, and every hour filled with expectation, or occupied by employment; and day passed after day in the enjoyment of success, or the vexation of disappointment.

Nor is it true only of men who are engaged in enterprises of hazard, which restrain the faculties to the utmost, and keep attention always upon the stretch. Religion is not only neglected by the projector and adventurer, by men who suspend their happiness on the slender thread of artifice, or stand tottering upon the point of chance. For, if we visit the most cool and regular parts of the community; if we turn our eye to the farm or to the shop, where one year glides uniformly after another, and nothing new or important is either expected or dreaded; yet still the same indifference about eternity will be found. There is no interest so small, nor engagement so slight, but that, if it be followed and expanded, it may be sufficient to keep religion out of the thoughts. Many men may be observed, not agitated by very violent passions, nor overborne by any powerful habits, nor depraved by any great degrees of wickedness; men who are honest dealers, faithful friends, and inoffensive neighbours; who yet have no vital principle of religion; who live wholly without self-examination, and indulge any desire that happens to arise, with very little resistance or compunction; who hardly know what it is to combat a temptation or to repent of a fault; but go on, neither self-approved nor self

condemned; not endeavouring after any excellence, nor reforming any vicious practice or irregular desire. They have no care of futurity, neither is God in all their thoughts; they direct none of their actions to his glory; they do nothing with the hope of pleasing; they avoid nothing for the fear of offending him. Those men want not much of being religious; they have nothing more than casual views to reform; and, from being peaceable and temperate heathens, might, if they would once awaken to their eternal interest, become pious and exemplary Christians. But let them not be deceived; they cannot suppose that God will accept him who never wished to be accepted by him, or made his will the rule of action.

Others there are, who, without attending to the written revelation of God's will, form to themselves a scheme of conduct in which vice is mingled with virtue, and who cover from themselves, and hope to cover from God, the indulgence of some criminal desire or the continuance of some vicious habit, by a few splendid instances of public spirit, or some few effusions of occasional bounty: but to these men it may, with emphatical propriety, be urged, that "God is not mocked;" he will not be worshiped nor obeyed but according to his own laws.

The mode of self-deception which prevails most in the world, and by which the greatest number of souls is at last betrayed to destruction, is the art which we are all too apt to practise, of putting far from us the evil day, of setting the hour

of death, and the day of account, at a great distance.

That death is certain, every one knows; nor is it less known, that life is destroyed, at all ages, by a thousand causes; that the strong and the vigorous are liable to diseases, and that caution and temperance afford no security against the final stroke. Yet, as the thought of dissolution is dreadful, we do not willingly admit it; the desire of life is connected with animation; every living being shrinks from his destruction: to wish, and to hope, are never far asunder; as we wish for long life, we hope that our wishes will be granted; and what we hope, we either believe, or do not examine. So tenaciously does our credulity lay hold of life, that it is rare to find any man so old as not to expect an addition to his years; or so far wasted and enfeebled with disease as not to flatter himself with hopes of recovery.

To those who procrastinate amendment in hopes of better opportunities in future time, it is too often vainly urged by the preacher, and vainly suggested by a thousand examples, that the hour of death is uncertain. This, which ought to be the cause of their terror, is the ground of their hope; that, as death is uncertain, it may be distant. This uncertainty is, in effect, the great support of the whole system of life. The man who died yesterday had purchased an estate, to which he intended some time to retire; or built a house, which he was hereafter to inhabit; and planted gardens and groves, that, in a certain number of years, were to supply delicacies to his

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