Christianity is a social principle. He who my numerous amiable young friends, the has discovered the use of time, and conse- benefit to be derived to their own minds quently the value of eternity, cannot but be from turning a certain portion of their time solicitous for the spiritual good of his fellow- to the personal instruction of the poor, for creatures. The one, indeed, is indicative of which so wide a field is just now providenthe other. But this good, like every other, tially opened. In communicating the eleis not without its dangers. We cannot es- ments of religious knowledge-in numbersentially benefit people without associating less repetitions of the same plain truths-in with them, without rendering ourselves being obliged to begin again the simple docagreeable to them. But in so doing we ument which they fancied they had long ago should ever recollect that we may seek to impressed-in the humbling necessity of please till we forget to serve them, we may lowering their ideas, and debasing their lansoften strong truths to render them more pal-guage, in order to make themselves intelliatable till we come gradually less to recom-gible-in the forbearance which dulness of mend them, than ourselves. In the spirit of intellect, perverseness of temper, and infriendly accommodation we may insensibly gratitude demand, they may gain some prolower the standard of religion, with a view to ficiency themselves, even where their sucmake ourselves more agreeable, and may de- cess with others is least encouraging. ceive in order to conciliate.

But to whatever account we turn our time Or we may fall into another error. We with respect to others, the first object of its may begin at the wrong end. We may cen- right employment is with ourselves; and this sure the wrong practice without any refer- not only in discharging those exercises of pience to the principle, or we may suit our ety and virtue, which are too obvious and counsels, not to the wants, but to the taste, too generally acknowledged, to require to be of our friend. In our endeavours to pro- specified; but, in attending to the secret mote the good of others, we should be care- dispositions of the mind, in order to ascerful to find out the points in which they are tain its real character. We do not mean to most deficient. If their error be ignorance imply that we can judge of its state by the of Scripture, if worldliness, if prejudice, if a thoughts which are necessarily suggested by general disinclination to seriousness, if a any actual business, or any pressing object, blind respect for religion, joined to an unac- such thoughts being the proper demand of quaintedness with its doctrines; in each case, the occasion, and not any certain indication a very different mode of conduct will be re- of our abiding state and habitual temper.quisite. In each, in all, we should, indeed, But by watching the nature and tendency of with the utmost fairness, lay open the whole our spontaneous thoughts, we may, in a great scheme of Christianity, neither concealing measure, determine on the character of our its difficulties, its humbling requisitions, nor minds; their voluntary thoughts and unthe self-denials it imposes. But at the same prompted feelings, being the streams which time, if we suspect any one truth to be par- indicate the fountain whence they flow.ticularly revolting to them, it will be more The heart is that perennial spring; for, prudent to approach this truth gradually whether grace or nature supply the current, through others, from which they are less the fountain is inexhaustible. In either averse, than, by forcing its introduction at case, the more abundantly it flows, the more the outset, shut up the way to farther pro- constantly its waste is fed by fresh supplies; gress. Every doctrine should be unfolded expense, instead of exhausting, augments gradually, judiciously, temperately, not in- the stream, whether the source from earth sisting on any points that are not clearly supply worldly thoughts, or that from above scriptural, nor on any that admit of doubtful such as are heavenly. Thoughts determine disputation, nor on many points at a time; on the character: as the man thinketh so is and, above all, on none unseasonably, or un-he. ceasingly.

This habit of turning time to account, by endeavouring to be useful to others, will, if conducted with mildness, and exercised with Christian humility, be eminently beneficial to ourselves. It will set us on a closer examination of the truths we suggest; and in contending with blindness and self-sufficiency, we shall find a wholesome exercise for our own patience and moderation. It may remind us, that we were once, perhaps in the same state Above all, it will put us on a more strict watchfulness over our own hearts and lives, lest we should be adopting one set of principles for our conversation, and another for our conduct. It will induce the necessity of a more exact consistency, as they, to whom we are counsellors, will not be backward, if we furnish them with the least ground, to be our censurers.

And here I would affectionately suggest to

What a scene will open upon us, when, from our eternal state, we shall look back on the use we have made of time! What a revolution will be wrought in our opinions! What a contrast will be exhibited, when we shall take a clear retrospect of all we have done, and all we ought to have done! And shall we, then, put off the inspection to an uncertain period, to a period, when we can neither repent to any purpose for what was wrong, nor begin to do what we shall then perceive would have been right? Let these frequent meditations on death, lead us to reflect what the feelings of a dying bed will be. Let us think now what will then be the review of riches mis-spent, of talents neglected or perverted, of influence abused, of learning misapplied, of time misemployed! To entertain serious thoughts of death now, is the most likely method for rectifying tempers, for conquering propensities, for estab

lishing principles, for confirming habits, of which we shall then feel the consequences; for relinquishing enterprises and pursuits, for the success of which we may then be as much afflicted, as we should now be at their defeat.

Charity comprehends an indefinitely wide sphere, both in feeling and doing. According to the arrangement of St. Paul, in his beautiful personification of this grace,* she may be said to embrace almost the whole scheme of religious, personal, and social duty. 'Patient and kind,' she does not wait to be solicited to acts of benignity, she seizes the occasion-she does more, she watches for it. She endures' evils, but inflicts none; she does not select her trials, but bears all things.' Though she believes all things,' yet she exercises her hope without relinquishing her prudence; sometimes, where conviction forbids her thinking favourably, even then it does not prevent her hoping all things.' She subdues vaunting,' conquers the swellings of insolence, and the intractableness of pride. Not only she envieth not,' not only she disallows the injustice of desir

He who cannot find time to consult his Bible, will find, one day, that he has time to be sick; he who has no time to pray, must find time to die. He who can find no time to reflect, is most likely to find time to sin; he who cannot find time for repentance, will find an eternity in which repentance will be of no avail Let us, then, under the influence of the Divine spirit, seriously reflect, under what law we came into the world: it is appointed for all men once to die, and, after death, the JUDGMENT' Is is not obvious, then, that the design of life is to prepare for judgment; and that, in proportion as we employ time well, we make immortali-ing what is another's, but by a noble disdain ty happy?

CHAP. IX.

On Charity.

ity makes another's goods her own by a simple process; without dispossessing the proprietor, she rejoices so much in another's prosperity that it becomes hers, because it is his.

of selfishness, she even seeketh not her own.' Her disinterestedness stirs her up to the perpetual rooting out that principle wrought by nature into the constitution of the soul. So far from thinking it a proof of spirit to resent injuries, she is not easily provoked' by them. She smooths the fierceIn that general use of the Talents, sug-ness of the irascible, and corrects the acrigested in the parable, there is also a particu-mony of the evil-tempered. She not only lar vocation on the exercise of which, every does not perpetrate, but she thinketh no man must equitably determine. Each is evil. She has found a shorter way of becomparticularly called upon to acquit himself of ing rich than avarice ever invented, for charthat more immediate duty, for the practice of which, God has given special endowments and opportunity. Our Maker requires the specific exercise of the specific talent. The nature of the gift points out the nature of the requisition. The use of endowment is a peculiar debt, a marked obligation. This is not a gift confounded with the mass of his gifts, but one by which God designs to be, by that individual, more remarkably glorified. But charity is a virtue of all times and all places. It is not so much an independent grace in itself, as an energy, which gives the last touch and highest finish to every other, and resolves them all into one common prin ciple. It is called the very bond of perfectness, not only because it unites us to God, our ultimate perfection, but because it ties all the other virtues together, and refers them thus concatenated, to Him, their common source and centre.

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St. Peter having given a pressing exhortation to many exalted duties, finishes by ascribing to charity this emphatical superiority; Above all things, have fervent charity.' It is, indeed, the prolific principle of all duty a confluence of every thing that is lovely and amiable: the fountain from which all excellencies flow, the stream in which they all meet. It is not subject to the ebb and flow of passion or partiality--it is true christian sympathy. It is tender without weakness; it does not arise from that constitutional softness which may be rather infirmity than virtue. It is the affection of the Gospel; a love derived from the Spirit of Christ, and reciprocally communicated among his genuine followers.

Here we see that the Apostle places charity not only before all the virtues which he thus gracefully marshals, before qualities the most moral, rifts the most spiritual, attainments the most intellectual, but he actually degrades these last in the comparison; he does not barely lower their value, he annihilates it. Without this principle of life, this soul of duty, this essence of goodness, they are not only little, they are nothing. Without charity, possessions, talents, exertions, are all fruitless. They are of no value in the sight of God: they are of no efficacy to our salvation. Charity alone sanctifies our offerings, recommends our prayers, makes our very praises acceptable.

and

And though nothing is formally efficacious but the blood and merits of Christ, yet charity, as a divine grace, and one that will never cease, shows that our interest in him, and union with him, are real and genuine.

But to descend to the particulars of charity, and apply the different branches of it to the common purposes of life.-Whenever we are promoting the good of mankind, either by assisting public institutions, or relieving individuals, we are obviously helping on the cause of charity; and, when we cannot effectively assist the work, we may exercise the principle; we may pray for the happiness which we cannot confer, and rejoice in

*First Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. xiii.

every addition to the general good towards to our particular connexions-must not be which we cannot contribute. On the other confined to unfounded attachments, to partyhand, the purse may sometimes be open favourites. It must be governed by the law where the heart is shut. And it is perhaps of justice. We must not do a little good to a more rare and a higher virtue to exercise one which may involve a greater injury to forbearance towards the faults and to put a another: yet though we should keep our candid construction on the actions, of others. hearts always open, and our feelings alive to than to supply their wants, or promote their the general benefit, still, as our power must temporal interests. But whether candour in be inevitably contracted, whatever right othjudging or liberality in giving, be the virtue ers may have to our beneficence, local cirin exercise, by the adoption of each as a law, cumstances, natural expectations, and presand the practice of both on the ground of con- sing necessity, confer the more immediate formity to the Divine will, we shall acquire claim. The most immediate is that of the such a habit of exercising the kind affections, household of faith' that what was adopted as a principle will From hence it appears, that in inquiring be established into a pleasure; what was a into the duties of charity, we must overlook force upon nature, will almost grow into a the use to be made of riches, one of the talpart of it; obligation will become choice, ents implied in the parable. The applicalaw impulse, duty necessity; the energy tion of money, whether kept by its owners will become so powerful, that the heart will to their hurt, or squandered to their destrucinvoluntarily spring to the performance; in tion, will equally be made the subject of final dolence, selfishness, trouble, inconvenience, investigation. Lord Bacon's remark, that will vanish under the vigorous operation of a riches, when kept in a heap, are corrupt habit whose motive is genuine Christianity. like a dunghill, but, when spread abroad, dífOne Christian grace is never exercised at fuse beauty and fertility,' has been more adthe expense of another, nor is it perfect, un-mired than acted upon. All the fine sentenless it promotes that other. This charity en- ces that have been pelted at the head of covjoys abstinently that she may give liberally. etousness have probably never reformed one While she restrains every wrong inclination, miser; nor have the most pointed aphorisms, she stimulates us to such as are right. She not divinely directed, ever taught the luxuriis never a solitary quality, but is inseparably ous the true use of money. Happily the age linked with truth and equity. She leads us in which we live is so generally disposed to perpetually to examine our means, disposi- acts of beneficence, that there never was a tions, and opportunities, and to exert their period which less imposed the necessity to combined force for the promotion of the press the duty, to enforce the practice, or to greatest possible good. She teaches us to point out the objects. A thousand new chancontribute to the comfort of others as well as nels are opened, yet the old ones are not to their necessities. She converts small kind- dried up; the streams flow in abundance, as nesses into great ones, by doing them with if fed by a perennial fountain. reference to God; for it is not so much the worth, as the temper, which will render them acceptable to Him

Let not any one, however, intrench himself in the supposed security of surrounding goodness. Let not any take comfort that he lives in an age of charity, if he himself is not charitable. We are not benevolent by contact or infection, or by breathing an atmosphere of charity. Yet who has not heard persons exultingly boast of this noble characteristic of the age, who are by no means remarkable for contributing their own contingent towards establishing its character? Probably many a man gloried in the valour of his country, and exulted in the pride of being an Englishman, after the battles of Trafalgar and Salamanca, who, had he been sent into the action would have been shot for cowardice

We must not judge of our charity by single acts and particular instances, for they are not always good men who do good things, but by our general tendencies and propensities. We must strive after an uniformity in our charity --examine whether it be equable, steady, voluntary, and not a charity of times, and seasons, and humours. If we are as unkind and illiberal in one instance, as we are profuse in another, when the demand is equal, and we have both the choice and the means, whatever we may be, we are not charitable. Though charity, as we have already observed, is a quality of universal application, and by no means limited within the narrow Who has not seen the ready eye discharge bounds of alms-giving, yet, not to allow a its kindly showers at a tale of wo, and the due, that is, a high rank and station to those frugal sentimentalist comfort himself that his works of benevolence, to which our Redeem- tears had paid more cheaply the debt of beer gives so conspicuous a place in his exhibi- nevolence, for which his purse had been sotion of the scrutiny at the general judgment, licited. The Author, many years ago, made would be mistaking the genius of Christian-one in a party of friends: an expected guest, ity, would be departing from the practice and the principles of its Founder; it would be forgetting the high dignity be conferred on this grace, when he declared that he should consider the smallest work of love done to the least of his followers for his sake as done to himself.

This pecuniary charity is not to be limited

who was rather late, at length came in; she was in great agitation, having been detained on the road by a dreadful fire in the neighbourhood. The poor family, who were gone to bed, had been with difficulty awakened. The mother had escaped by throwing berself from a two pair of stairs window into the street. She then recollected, that in her ex

treme terror, she had left her child behind in We must readily not only a llow for, but bed. To the astonishment of all present, admire, the ardour of an anima ted preacher, she instantly rushed back through the flames, who, feeling his heart expand with his suband to the general joy, soon appeared with ject, finds it as much his delight as his duty the child alive in her arms. While she was to impart to every bosom the tender and expressing her gratitude, the light of the compassionate sympathies with which his lamps fell on its face, and she perceived, to own overflows; and it is with reluctance we her inexpressible horror, that she had saved have presumed to intimate the restraints, the child of another woman-her own had which christian piety should impose on itself perished. It may be imagined what were in not overstating even a christian duty. the feelings of the company. A subscription We have no right to determine on the prowas instantly begun. Almost every one had portions and possibility of any man's charity, liberally contributed, when a nobleman, who but on the principle we may determine; could have bought the whole party, turning there must be an exhaustless spring in the to the writer of these pages, said‹ Madam, Ï heart, even where the Christian's means will will give you,' every expecting eye was turn- not admit of a perpetual current. Love is ed to the peer, knowing him to be unused to in fact that motive principle, without which the giving mood. the person addressed joy- neither faith, nor mysteries, nor martyrdom, fully held out her hand, but drew it back on no nor even the addition of the second guinhis coolly saying, I will give you this affect- ea to the plate, where only one had been ining incident for the subject of your next tra tended, nor giving all our goods to the poor, gedy.' Some will read this passage who were will profit any thing. Where this vital spirpresent on the occasion it is wanting, the most ample bounty will not But since neither the logic nor the rhetoric reach its end; where it exists, the cup of of the writer, were she so happy as to possess cold water' shall be accepted. Without this either, is likely to make the churl liberal,' animating principle, though the bounty may or to stir up the vain or the voluptuous to a obtain applause, may influence others, may beneficence which shall bear any fair propor- do good, and promote good, yet it may untion to the costly maintenance of their luxu- happily fall short of promoting the spiritual ry or their vanity, the slight observations interests of the giver. He who has promiswhich follow shall be ad ressed to the boun-ed to render to every man according to his tiful giver, a character, blessed be God, as common as it is amiable. To the act it is unnecessary to excite him; to the motive be cannot too carefully look. This is the To neglect works of charity, not to be more requisite, as, in an age in which more largely liberal in the performance of them excellent charity sermons are annually according to our ability, is an infallible evipreached than ever were delivered since the dence that our professions of piety mean establishment of Christianity-that which nothing On the other hand, to depend upon alone, of all the religions in the world, ever them as what is to bear us out in our claims made charitable foundations a part of its in- for heaven, before the tribunal of God, is to stitution-we now and then meet with one, offend our Maker and deceive our own souls. which seems to invert the principle, and to We would be the very last to undervalue, put the point for the base. It is with diffi- or to di-courage charity, but is it discouradence we put the question, dreading to be ging it to place it on its true ground; to assuspected of indulging a spirit of censure sert that we may build an hospital without where we would wish to offer unqualified charity, as we may endow a church without commendation; but do we not now and then piety, if we consider the one as an expiation hear assigned to almsgiving, nay assigned to for sin, or the other as a substitution for hothe individual contribution for which the liness? well intentioned preacher is eloquently pleading, a merit so vast, that it would seem to supply the absence of all other merits; a merit which would almost induce one to believe that a more than ordinary contribution to the plate would prove a golden key, to stand in his stead, who has opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers?"

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To explain my meaning by an example :In the temple of Him who gave his son to die, to atone for the sins of the world, I once heard, and from no mean authority, Charity called the atoning virtue of the age. To have termed it the prevailing. the distin guishing, the most amiable characteristic of the age, had been right and true. But when I found it thus gravely proposed as an expiation for sin, I was ready to imagine that I heard the exclamation of St. Paul to his Galatians I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you unto the grace of Christ unto another Gospel.'

deeds, knows the principle of the deed, and has never promised to recompense any which has no reference to himself.

Some are ingenious in contriving, by a strange self-delusion, to swell the amount of their charity, by tacking to it extraneous items of a totally distinct character. The Author was formerly acquainted with a lady of rank who though her benevolence was suspected to bear no proportion to the splendor of her establishment was yet rather too apt to make her bounties a subject of conversation. After enumerating the various instances of her beneficence she often concluded by saying, notwithstanding my large family I give all this in charity besides paying the poor rates; thus converting a compulsory act, to which all are equally subject, into a voluntary bounty.

Our corruptions are so hable to infect even our holy things,' that we should be vigilant in this best exercise of the best affections of the heart-affections which God, when he graciously converted duty into a delight, gave us, in order, by a pleasurable feeling,