"fhew

with. As far as you are able, you mercy with cheerfulnefs;" and your be nevolent fentiments and good wishes flow without restraint towards all your fellowcreatures: but your condition and rank in life, and the real neceffities which prefs upon you, oblige you to confine your actual charity within narrow limits. Affure yourself that your smallest offering on the altar of Humanity will be acceptable to him who "loveth a cheerful giver;" nay, that even the figh of pity, and the tear of sympathy, will obtain their reward. The two mites which the poor. widow caft into the treasury were not rejected.

In the feafon of affliction, when you are labouring under grievous pains of body, the lofs of friends, disappointment in your affairs, or other heavy calamities, you may, perhaps, lament the infirmity of your nature, and be disposed to blame yourself that you do not fupport your burden with greater fortitude. In circumftances like

these,

thefe, comfort yourself with the reflec tion, that the Almighty doth not require you to suppress the emotions of nature: he expects you to bear affliction as a chriftian, but he allows you to feel it as a As a father pitieth his children, fo the Lord pitieth them that fear him: he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are duft.

man.

In fine, you are, perhaps, daily regretting your deficiency in many parts of the chriftian temper and character; and in the midst of a course of fincere obedience to the will of God, are conscious of fo many occafional deviations from the path of duty, or of fuch imperfection in your moral and religious attainments, that you are apprehensive left, after all your most faithful, upright, and diligent exertions, you should fail of obtaining the divine approbation. Banish all fuch gloomy apprehenfions from your minds. Your heart is right in the fight of God, and you fincerely and constantly endeavour

endeavour to preserve a confcience void of offence, and to go on towards perfection. It is enough; your happiness is fecure; your virtue shall not go without its reward: for "where there is a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not,"

When

When a Defire of pleasing be

comes a Virtue.

ROMANS XV. 2.

Let every one of us please his neighbour for bis good to edification.

In the present state of human nature, it is not only criminal for any one to attempt to live to himself, but in the nature of things impoffible, that any one should ever accomplish it. Dependant as we neceffarily are upon one another for the very means of fubfiftence, as well as for moft of the comforts of life, we might as well attempt to live without air as to enjoy life without

To

without the kind offices of others. defpife the good-will, and to reject the fervices, of those with whom nature and fociety have connected us, would be as weak and foolish as it would be petulant and churlish.

There is, then, no merit in the mere act of pleafing our neighbour; for every prudent man will do it for his own convenience and intereft. That our attention to the inclinations of others may be virtuous, or even innocent, we must rescue it from the dominion of that selfishnefs which endeavours to attract every thing to its own center, and must submit it to the regulation of that charity which feeketh not its own profit, and learn, in obedience to the apoftolic precept of the text, every one of us to please his neighbour,' not for our own fecurity or emolument, but "for his good unto edification."

66

The world, in its prefent artificial and polished state, abounds with polite atten

tion