mean and pitiful a weakness as to forgive any one; for to pardon an injury always showed either want of spirit to feel it, or want of power to resent it. She was resolved she would never squander the money for which she had worked early and late, on a baggage who had thrown herself away on a beggar, while she had a daughter single, who might yet raise her family by a great match. I am sorry to say, that Mrs. Bragwell's anger was not owing to the undutifulness of the daughter, or the worthlessness of the husband; poverty was, in her eyes, the grand crime. The doctrine of forgiveness, as a religious principle, made no more a part of Mr. Bragwell's system than of his wife's; but in natural feeling, particularly for this offending daughter, he much exceeded her.

In a few months the youngest Miss Bragwell desired leave to return home from Mr. Worthy's. She had, indeed, only consented to go thither as a less evil of the two, than staying in her father's house, after her sister's elopement. But the sobriety and simplicity of Mr. Worthy's family were irksome to her. Habits of vanity and idleness were become so rooted in her mind, that any degree of restraint was a burden; and though she was outwardly civil, it was easy to see that she longed to get away. She resolved, however, to profit by her sister's faults; and made her parents easy, by assuring them she never would throw herself away on a man who was worth nothing. Encouraged by these promises, which her parents thought included the whole sum and substance of human wisdom, and which was all they said they could in reason expect, her father allowed her to come home.

Mr. Worthy, who accompanied her, found Mr. Bragwell gloomy and dejected. As his house was no longer a scene of vanity and festivity, Mr. Bragwell tried to make himself and his friend believe that he was grown religious; whereas he was only become discontented. As he had always fancied that piety was a melancholy, gloomy thing, and as he felt his own mind really gloomy, he was willing to think that he was growing pious. He had, indeed, gone more constantly to church, and had taken less pleasure in feasting and cards, and now and then read a chapter in the Bible: but all this was because his spirits were low, and not because his heart was changed. The outward actions were more regular, but the inward man was the same. The forms of religion were resorted to as a painful duty; but this only added to his misery, while he was utterly ignorant of its spirit and its power. He still, however, reserved religion as a loathsome medicine, to which he feared he must have recourse at last, and of which he even now considered every abstinence from

pleasure, or every exercise of piety, as a bitter dose. His health also was impaired, so that his friend found him in a pitiable state, neither able to receive pleasure from the world, which he so dearly loved, nor from religion, which he so greatly feared. He expected to have been much commended by Worthy for the change in his way of life; but Worthy, who saw that the alteration was only owing to the loss of animal spirits, and to the casual absence of temptation, was cautious of flattering him too much. "I thought, Mr. Worthy," said he, " to have received more comfort from you. I was told, too, that religion was full of comfort, but I do not much find it." "You were told the truth," replied Worthy; religion is full of comfort, but you must first be brought into a state fit to receive it, before it can become so; you must be brought to a deep and humbling sense of sin. To give you comfort while you are puffed up with high thoughts of yourself, would be to give you a strong cordial in a high fever. Religion keeps back her cordials till the patient is lowered and emptied; emptied of self, Mr. Bragwell. If you had a wound, it must be examined and cleansed, ay, and probed too, before it would be safe to put on a healing plaster. Curing it to the outward eye, while it was corrupt at bottom, would only bring on a mortification, and you would be a dead man, while you trusted that the plaster was curing you. You must be, indeed, a Christian, before you can be entitled to the comforts of Christianity."

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"I am a Christian," said Bragwell; "many of my friends are Christians; but I do not see it has done us much good." "Christianity itself," answered Worthy, "cannot make us good, unless it be applied to our hearts. Christian privileges will not make us Christians, unless we make use of them. On that shelf, I see, stands your medicine. The doctor orders you to take it. Have you taken it?" "Yes," replied Bragwell. "Are you the better for it? said Worthy. I think I am," he replied. But," added Worthy, are you the better because the doctor has ordered it merely, or because you have also taken it?" "What a foolish question!" cried Bragwell; "why, to be sure, the doctor might be the best doctor, and his physic the best physic in the world; but if it stood forever on the shelf, I could not expect to be cured by it. My doctor is not a mountebank. He does not pretend to cure by a charm. The physic is good; and as it suits my case, though it is bitter, I take it."

"You have now," said Worthy, "explained, undesignedly, the reason why religion does so little good in the world. It is not a mountebank; it does not work by a charm; but it

offers to cure your worst corruptions by wholesome, though sometimes bitter prescriptions. But you will not take them; you will not apply to God with the same earnest desire to be healed, with which you apply to your doctor; you will not confess your sins to the one as honestly as you tell your symptoms to the other, nor read your Bible with the same faith and submission with which you take your medicine. In reading it, however, you must take care not to apply to yourself the comforts which are not suited to your case. You must, by the grace of God, be brought into a condition to be entitled to the promises, before you can expect the comfort of them. Conviction is not conversion; that worldly discontent, which is the effect of worldly disappointment, is not that 'godly sorrow which worketh repentance.' Besides, while you have been pursuing all the gratifications of the world, do not complain that you have not all the comforts of religion too. Could you live in the full enjoyment of both, the Bible would not be true."

Bragwell. Well, sir, but I do a good action sometimes; and God, who knows he did not make us perfect, will accept it, and for the sake of my good actions will forgive my faults. Worthy. Depend upon it, God will never forgive your sins for the sake of your virtues. There is no commutation tax there. But he will forgive them, on your sincere repentance, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Goodness is not a single act to be done; so that a man can say, "I have achieved it, and the thing is over;" but it is a habit, that is to be constantly maintained; it is a continual struggle with the opposite vice. No man must reckon himself good, for any thing he has already done; though he may consider it as an evidence that he is in the right way, if he feels a constant disposition to resist every evil temper. But every Christian grace will always find work enough; and he must not fancy, that because he has conquered once, his virtue may now sit down and take a holiday.

Bragwell. But I thought we Christians need not be so watchful against sin; because Christ, as you so often tell me, died for sinners.

Worthy. Do not deceive yourself: the evangelical doctrines, while they so highly exalt a Savior, do not diminish the heinousness of sin; they rather magnify it. Do not comfort yourself by extenuation or mitigation of sin; but by repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not by diminishing or denying your debt; but by confessing it, by owning you have nothing to pay, that forgiveness is to be hoped.

Bragwell. I don't understand you. You want to have me as good as a saint, and as penitent as a sinner at the same time.

Worthy. I expect of every real Christian, that is, every real penitent, that he should labor to get his heart and life impressed with the stamp of the Gospel. I expect to see him aiming at a conformity in spirit and in practice to the will of God in Jesus Christ. I expect to see him gradually attaining towards an entire change from his natural self. When I see a man at constant war with those several pursuits and tempers which are with peculiar propriety termed worldly, it is a plain proof to me that that change must have passed on him which the Gospel emphatically terms becoming "a new man."

Bragwell. I hope then I am altered enough to please you. I am sure affliction has made such a change in me, that my best friends hardly know me to be the same man. Worthy. That is not the change I mean. 'Tis true, from a merry man you are become a gloomy man; but that is because you have been disappointed in your schemes; the principle remains unaltered. A great match for your single daughter would at once restore all the spirits you have lost by the imprudence of your married one. The change the Gospel requires is of quite another cast: it is having "a new heart and a right spirit;"—it is being "God's workmanship;"-it is being "created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works;""-it is becoming "new creatures;"-it is "old things being done away, and all things made new;"-it is by so"learning the truth as it is in Jesus, to the putting off the old man, and putting on the new, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness;"-it is by "partaking of the divine nature."-Pray observe, Mr. Bragwell, these are not my words, nor words picked out of any fanatical book; they are the words of that Gospel you profess to believe; it is not a new doctrine; it is as old as our religion itself. Though I cannot but observe, that men are more reluctant in believing, more averse to adopting this doctrine, than almost any other; and indeed I do not wonder at it; for there is perhaps no one which so attacks corruption in its strong holds; no one which so thoroughly prohibits a lazy Christian from uniting a life of sinful indulgence with an outward profession of piety.

Bragwell now seemed resolved to set about the matter in earnest; but he resolved in his own strength: he never thought of applying for assistance to the Fountain of Wisdom; to Him who giveth might to them who have no

strength. Unluckily, the very day Mr. Worthy took leave, there happened to be a grand ball at the next town, on account of the assizes. An assize ball, courteous reader, is a scene to which gentlemen and ladies periodically resort, to celebrate the crimes and calamities of their fellow-creatures by dancing and music, and to divert themselves with feasting and drinking while unhappy wretches are receiving sentence of death!

To this ball Miss Bragwell went, dressed out with a double portion of finery, pouring out on her head, in addition to her own ornaments, the whole bandbox of feathers, beads, and flowers, her sister had left behind her. While she was at the ball, her father formed many plans of religious reformation; he talked of lessening his business, that he might have more leisure for devotion, though not just now, while the markets were so high; and then he began to think of sending a handsome subscription to the infirmary; though, on second thoughts, he concluded he need not be in a hurry, but might as well leave it in his will; though to give, and repent, and reform, were three things he was bent upon. But when his daughter came home at night, so happy and so fine! and telling how she had danced with Squire Squeeze, the great corn contractor, and how many fine things he had said to her, Mr. Bragwell felt the old spirit of the world return in its full force. A marriage with Mr. Dashall Squeeze, the contractor, was beyond his hopes; for Mr. Squeeze was supposed from a very low beginning to have got rich during the war.

As for Mr. Squeeze, he had picked up as much of the history of his partner between the dances as he desired: he was convinced there would be no money wanting; for Miss Bragwell, who was now looked on as an only child, must needs be a great fortune, and Mr. Squeeze was too much used to advantageous contracts to let this slip. As he was gaudily dressed, and possessed all the arts of vulgar flattery, Miss Bragwell eagerly caught at his proposal to wait on her father next day. Squeeze was quite a man after Bragwell's own heart-a genius at getting money, a fine dashing fellow at spending it. He told his wife that this was the very sort of man for his daughter; for he got money like a Jew, and spent it like a prince: but whether it was fairly got, or wisely spent, he was too much a man of the world to inquire. Mrs. Bragwell was not so run away with by appearances, but that she desired her husband to be careful, and make himself quite sure it was the right Mr. Squeeze, and no impostor. But being assured by her husband that Betsy would certainly

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