to choose that which has no interest in our will, no correspondence with our passions. One of the first duties of a Christian is, to endeavour to conquer this antipathy to the selfdenying doctrines against which the human heart so sturdily holds out. The learned take incredible pains for the acquisition of knowledge. The philosopher cheerfully consumes the midnight oil in his laborious pursuits; he willingly sacrifices food and rest to conquer a difficulty in science. Here the labour is pleasant, the fatigue is grateful, the very difficulty is not without its charms. Why do we feel so differently in our religious pursuits? Because in the most operose human studies, there is no contradiction of self, there is no opposition to the will, there is no combat of the affections. If the passions are at all implicated, if self-love is at all concerned, it is rather in the way of gratification than of opposition. are already wrought into the assimilation. It would teach us when we read the history of an established Christian, to labour after a conformity to it, instead of mistaking it for the delineation of our own character. Human prudence, daily experience, selflove, all teach us to distrust others, but all motives combined do not teach us to distrust ourselves; we confide unreservedly in our own heart, though as a guide it misleads, as a counsellor it betrays. It is both party and judge. As the one, it blinds through ignorance, as the other, it acquits through partiality. Though we value ourselves upon our discretion in not confiding too implicitly in others, yet it would be difficult to find any friend, any neighbour, or even any enemy who has deceived us so often as we have deceived ourselves. If any acquaintance betray us, we take warning, are on the watch, and are There is such a thing as a mechanical careful not to trust him again. But however christianity. There are good imitations of frequently the bosom traitor deceive and misreligion, so well executed and so resembling, lead, no such determined stand is made as not only to deceive the spectator, but the against his treachery: we lie as open to his artist. Self-love in its various artifices to next assault as if he had never betrayed deceive us to our ruin, sometimes makes use us. We do not profit by the remembrance of a means, which, if properly used, is one of the past delusion to guard against the fuof the most beneficial that can be devised to ture. preserve us from its influence-the perusal of pious books. Yet if another deceive us, it is only in matters respecting this world; but we deBut these very books in the hands of the ceive ourselves in things of eternal moment. ignorant, the indolent, and the self satisfied, The treachery of others can only affect our produce an effect directly contrary to that fortune or our fame, or at worst our peace; which they were intended to produce, and but the internal traitor may mislead us to our which they actually do produce on minds everlasting destruction. "We are too much prepared for the perusal. They inflate where disposed to suspect others who probably have they were intended to humble. As some neither the inclination nor the power to inhypochondriacs, who amuse their melancholy jure us, but we seldom suspect our own heart hours with consulting indiscriminately every though it possesses and employs both. We medical book which falls in their way, fancy ought however fairly to distinguish between they find their own case in every page, their the simple vanity and the hypocrisy of selfown ailment in the ailment of every pa- love. Those who content themselves with tient, till they believe they actually feel eve- talking as if the praise of virtue implied the ry pain of which they read, though the work practice, and who expect to be thought good, treats of cases diametrically opposite to their because they commend goodness, only propaown:-so the religious valetudinarian, as gate the deceit which has misled themselves, unreasonably elated as the others are depres-whereas hypocrisy does not even believe sed, reads books descriptive of a highly reli- herself. She has deeper motives; she has gious state, with the same unhappy self-ap- designs to answer, competitions to promote, plication. He feels his spiritual pulse by a projects to effect. But mere vanity can subwatch that has no movements in common sist on the thin air of the admiration she sowith it, yet he fancies that they go exactly licits, without intending to get any thing by alike. He dwells with delight on symptoms, it. She is gratuitous in her loquacity; for not one of which belongs to him, and flatters she is ready to display her own merit to those himself with their supposed agreement. He who have nothing to give in return, whose observes in those books what are the signs applause brings no profit, and whose censure of grace, and he observes them with com- no disgrace. plete self-application; he traces what are the evidences of being in God's favour, and those evidences he finds in himself. It is not strange that we should judge of things not according to the opinion of others in cases foreign to ourselves; cases on which Self-ignorance appropriates truths faithful-we have no correct means of determining; ly stated but wholly inapplicable. The pre-but we do it in things which relate immedisumption of the novice arrogates to itself the ately to ourselves, thus making not truth but experience of the advanced Christian. He the opinion of others our standard in points is persuaded that it is his own case, and seizes on the consolations which belong only to the most elevated piety. Self-knowledge would correct the judgment. It would teach us to use the pattern held out as an original to copy, instead of leading us to fancy that we which others cannot know, and of which we ought not to be ignorant. We are as fond of the applauses even of the upper gallery as the dramatic poet. Like him we affect to despise the mob considered as individual judges, yet as a mass, we covet their ap 484 plause. Like him we feel strengthened by, the number of voices in our favour, and are less anxious about the goodness of the work, than the loudness of the acclamation. Success is merit in the eye of both. may be laying out for the praise of generosty, while we are only exercising a simple act of justice. These refinements of self-love are the dangers only of spirits of the higher order, but to such they are dangers. The ingenuity of self-deceit is inexhaust ble. If people extol us, we feel our good opinion of ourselves confirmed. If they dis like us, we do not think the worse of ourselves, but of them; it is not we who want merit but they who want penetration. If we cannot refuse them discernment, we persuade ourselves that they are not so much insensible to our worth as envious of it. There is no shift, stratagem, or device which we do not employ to make us stand well with ourselves. But even though we may put more refinement into our self-love, it is self-love still. No subtlety of reasoning, no elegance of taste, though it may disguise the radical prinWe are still too much ciple, can destroy it. in love with flattery, even though we may profess to despise that praise which depends on the acclamations of the vulgar. But if we are over anxious for the admiration of the better born and the better bred, this by no means proves that we are not vain; it only proves that our vanity has a better taste. We are too apt to calculate our own charOur appetite is not coarse enough perhaps to relish that popularity which ordinary ambi- acter unfairly in two ways; by referring to tion covets, but do we never feed in secret some one signal act of generosity, as if such on the applauses of more distinguished judg-acts were the common habit of our lives, and There es? Is not their having extolled our merit a by treating our habitual faults, not as comconfirmation of our discernment, and the mon babits, but occasional failures. is scarcely any fault in another which offends chief ground of our high opinion of theirs? us more than vanity, though perhaps there is none that really injures us so little. We have no patience that another should be as full of self-love as we allow ourselves to be; so full of himself as to have little leisure to We are particularly quick attend to us. sighted to the smallest of his imperfections which interferes with our self-esteem, while we are lenient to his more grave offences. which by not coming in contact with our vanity, do not shock our self-love. But if any circumstance arise to induce them to change the too favourable opinion which they had formed of us, though their general character remain unimpeachable, and their general conduct as meritorious as when we most admired them, do we not begin to judge them unfavourably? Do we not begin to question their claim to that discernment which we had ascribed to them, to suspect the soundness of their judgment which we had so loudly commended? It is well if we do not entertain some doubt of the rectitude of their principles, as we probably do of the reality of their friendship. We do not candidly allow for the effect which prejudice, which misrepresentation, which party may produce even on an upright mind. Still less does it enter into our calculation that we may actually have deserved their disapprobation, that something in our conduct may have incurred the change in theirs. It is no low attainment to detect this lurking injustice in our hearts, to strive against it, to pray against it, and especially to conquer it. We may reckon that we have acquired a sound principle of integrity when prejudice no longer blinds our judgment, nor resentment biasses our justice; when we do not make our opinion of another depend on the opinion which we conceive he entertains of us. We must keep a just measure, and hold an even balance in judging of ourselves as well as of others. We must have no false estimate which shall incline to condemnation without, or to partiality within. The examining principle must be kept sound, or our determination will not be exact. It must be at once a testimony of our rectitude, and an incentive to it. In order to improve this principle, we should make it a test of our sincerity to search out and to commend the good qualities of those who do not like us. But this must be done without affectation, and without insincerity. We must practice no false candour. If we are not on our guard we Is it not strange that though we love ourselves so much better than we love any other person, yet there is hardly one, however little we value him, that we had not rather be alone with, that we had not rather converse with, that we had not rather come to close quarters with, than ourselves? Scarcely one whose private history, whose thoughts, feelDo we not use every ings, actions, and motives we had not rather pry into than our own. art and contrivance to avoid getting at the truth of our own character? Do we not endeavour to keep ourselves ignorant of what every one else knows respecting our faults, and do we not account that man our enemy, who takes on himself the best office of a friend, that of opening to us our real state and condition? The little satisfaction people find when they faithfully look within, makes them fly more eagerly to things without. Early practice and long habit might conquer the repugnance to look at home, and the fondness for looking abroad. Familiarity often makes us pleased with the society which, while strangers, we dreaded. Intimacy with ourselves might produce a similar effect. We might perhaps collect a tolerably just knowledge of our own character, could we ascertain the real opinion of others respecting us; but that opinion being, except in a moment of resentment, carefully kept from us by our own precautions, profits us nothing. We do not choose to know their secret sentiments, because we do not choose to be cured of our error; because we love darkness rather than light;' because we con- The enemy within is always in a confederacy with the enemy without, whether that enemy be the world or the devil. The do mestic foe accommodates itself to their allurements, flatters our weaknesses, throws a veil over our vices, tarnishes our good deeds, gilds our bad ones, hoodwinks our judgment. and works hard to conceal our internal springs of action. There is, if the expression may be allowed, a sort of religious self-deceit, an affection of humility which is in reality full of life, which resolves all importance into what concerns self, which only looks at things as they refer to life. This religious vanity operates in two ways:-We not only fly out at the imputation of the smallest individual fault, while at the same time we affect to charge ourselves with more corruption than is attributed to us; but on the other hand, while we are lamenting our general want of all goodness, we fight for every particle that is disputed. The one quality that is in question always happens to be the very one to which we must lay claim, however deficient in others. Thus, while renouncing the pretensions to every virtue, we depreciate ourselves into all' We had rather talk even of our faults than not occupy the fore-ground of the canvass. · Self-love has the talent of imitating whatever the world admires, even though it should Humility does not consist in telling our be the Christian virtues. It leads us from faults, but in bearing to be told of them; in our regard to reputation to avoid all vices, hearing them patiently and even thankfully; not only which would bring punishment but in correcting ourselves when told; in not discredit by the commission. It can even hating those who tell us of them. If we were assume the zeal and copy the activity of little in our own eyes, and felt our real insigChristian charity. It communicates to our nificance, we should avoid false humility as conduct those proper ies and graces, mani-much as mere obvious vanity; but we selfested in the conduct of those who are actuated by a sounder motive. The difference lies in the ends proposed. The object of the one is to please God, of the other to obtain the praise of man. Self-love judging of the feelings of others by its own, is aware that nothing excites so much odium as its own character would do, if nakedly exhibited We feel, by our own disgust at its exhibition in others, how much disgust we ourselves should excite did we not invest it with the soft garb of gentle manners and polished address. When therefore we would not condescend to take the lowest place, to think others better than ourselves, to be courteous and pitiful,' on the true scripture ground, politeness steps in as the accidented substitute of humility, and the counterfeit brilliant is willingly worn by those who will not be at the expense of the jewel. dom dwell on our faults except in a general way, and rarely on those of which we are really guilty We do it in the hope of being contradicted, and thus of being confirmed in the secret good opinion we entertain of ourselves. It is not enough that we inveigh against ourselves, we must in a manner forget ourselves This oblivion of self from a pure principle, would go further towards our advancement in christian virtue, than the most splendid actions performed on the opposite ground. That self-knowledge which teaches us humility, teaches us compassion also. The sick pity the sick. They sympathize with the disorder of which they feel the symptoms in themselves. Self-knowledge also checks injustice by establishing the equitable principle of showing the kindness we expect to receive; it represses ambition by convincing us how little we are entitled to superiority; it renders adversity profitable by letting us see how much we deserve it; it makes prosperity safe, by directing our hearts to HIM who confers it, instead of receiving it as the consequence of our own desert. There is a certain elegance of mind, which will often restrain a well-bred man from sordid pleasures and gross voluptuousness. He will be led by his good taste perhaps not only to abhor the excesses of vice, but to admire the theory of virtue. But it is only the crapule of vice which he will abhor. Ex We even carry our self-importance to the quisite gratifications, sober luxury, incessant foot of the throne of God. When prostrate but not unmeasured enjoyment, form the there we are not required, it is true, to forprinciple of his plan of life, and if he observe get ourselves, but we are required to remema temperance in his pleasures, it is only be- ber HIM. We have indeed much sin to lacause excess would take off the edge, destroy ment, but we have also much mercy to the zest, and abridge the gratification. By adore. We have much to ask, but we have resisting gross vices he flatters himself that he is a temperate man, and that he has made all the sacrifices which self-denial imposes. Inwardly satisfied, he compares himself with those who have sunk into coarser indulgences, enjoys his own superiority in health, credit and unimpaired faculties, and triumphs in the dignity of his own character. likewise much to acknowledge. Yet our infinite obligations to God do not fill our hearts half as much as a petty uneasiness of our own; nor His infinite perfections as much as our own smallest want. The great, the only effectual antidote to self-love, is to get the love of God and of our neighbour firmly rooted in the heart. Ye! must be borne, and the silence must be ob- let us ever bear in mind that dependance on our fellow creatures is as carefully to be avoided as love of them is to be cultivated. There is none but God on whom the princi-glory in the attacks which their own indisples of love and dependance form but one cretion has invited. With more vanity than duty. CHAP. XIV. On the conduct of Christians in their course with the irreligious. truth they apply the strong and ill-chosen term of persecution, to the sneers and ridicule which some impropriety of manner or some inadvertency of their own has occasion. ed. Now and then it is to be feared the ceainter-sure may be deserved, and the high professor may possibly be but an indifferent moralist. Even a good man, a point we are not suffi ciently ready to concede, may have been blameable in some instance on which his censurers will naturally have kept a keen eye. On these occasions how forcibly does the pointed caution recur, which was implied by the divine moralist on the mount, and enfor ced by the apostle Peter, to distinguish for whose sake we are calumniated. THE Combination of integrity with discretion is the precise point at which a serious Christian must aim in his intercourse, and especially in his debates on religion, with men of the opposite description He must consider himself as not only having his own reputation but the honour of religion in his keeping. While he must on the one hand 'set his face as a flint' against any thing that By the way, this sharp look-out of worldly may be construed into compromise or eva- men on the professors of religion, is not withsion, into denying or concealing any chris- out very important uses. While it serves to tian truth, or shrinking from any command- promote circumspection in the real Christian, ed duty, in order to conciliate favour; he the detection to which it leads in the case of must, on the other hand, be scrupulously the hollow professor, forms a broad and use careful never to maintain a christian doc.ful line of distinction between two classes of trine with an unchristian temper. In en- characters so essentially distinct, and yet so deavouring to convince he must be cautious frequently, so unjustly, and so malevolently not needlessly to irritate. He must distin- confounded. guish between the honour of God and the The world believes, or at least affects to pride of his own character, and never be believe, that the correct and elegant minded pertinaciously supporting the one, under the religious man is blind to those errors and inpretence that he is only maintaining the oth-firmities, that eccentricity and bad taste, that er. The dislike thus excited against the dis-propensity to diverge from the straight line putant is at once transferred to the principle, of prudence, which is disccernible in some and the adversary's unfavourable opinion of pious but ill-judging men, and which delight religion is augmented by the faults of its and gratify the enemies of true piety, as furchampion. At the same time, the intemper-nishing them with so plausible a ground for ate champion puts it out of his power to be censure. But if the more judicious and betof any further service to the man whom his ter informed Christian bears with these inoffensive manners have disgusted. firmities, it is not that he does not clearly A serious Christian, it is true, feels an hon-perceive and entirely condemn them. But est indignation at hearing those truths on he bears with what he disapproves for the which his everlasting hopes depend, lightly sake of the zeal, the sincerity, the general treated. He cannot but feel his heart rise usefulness of these defective characters: at the affront offered to his Maker. But in- these good qualities are totally overlooked stead of calling down fire from heaven on by the censurer, who is ever on the watch to the reviler's head, he will raise a secret sup-aggravate the failings which Christian charplication to the God of heaven in his favour, ity laments without extenuating. It bears which, if it change not the heart of his opponent, will not only tranquillize his own, but soften it towards his adversary; for we cannot easily hate the man for whom we pray. with them from the belief that impropriety is less mischievous than carelessness, a bad judgment than a bad heart, and some little excesses of zeal than gross immorality or total indifference. He who advocates the sacred cause of Christianity, should be particularly aware of We are not ignorant how much truth itself fancying that his being religious will atone offends, though unassociated with any thing for his being disagreeable; that his ortho- that is displeasing. This furnishes an impordoxy will justify his uncharitableness, or his tant rule not to add to the unavoidable offence, zeal make up for his indiscretion. He must by mixing the faults of our own character not persuade himself that he has been serving with the cause we support; because we may God, when he has only been gratifying his be certain that the enemy will take care neyown resentment, when he has actually by aer to separate them. He will always volunfiery defence prejudiced the cause which he tarily maintain the pernicious association in might perhaps have advanced by temperate argument and persuasive mildness. Even a judicious silence under great provocation is, in a warm temper, real forbearance. And though to keep silence from good words' may be pain and grief, yet the pain and grief his own mind. He will never think or speak of religion, without connecting with it the real or imputed bad qualities of all the religious men he knows or has heard of. Let not then the friends of truth unneces sarily increase the number of her enemies. Let her not have at once to sustain the as- he will as least leave on the mind of the adsaults to which her divine character inevita-versary such favourable impressions, as may bly subjects her, and the obloquy to which induce him to inquire farther. He may be the infirmities and foibles of her injudicious, able to employ on some future occasion, to and if there any such, her unworthy cham- more effectual purpose, the credit which his pions expose her forbearance will have obtained for him: whereas uncharitable vehemence would probably have forever shut the ears and closed the heart of his opponent against any further intercourse. But we sometimes justify our rash violence under colour that our correct piety cannot endure the faults of others. The pharisees, overflowing with wickedness themselves, made the exactness of their own virtue a pre- But if the temperate pleader should not be tence for looking with horror on the publi- so happy as to produce any considerable efcans, whom our Saviour regarded with com- fect on the mind of his antagonist, he is in passionate tenderness, while he reprobated any case promoting the interests of his own with keen severity the sins, and especially soul; he is at least imitating the faith and the censoriousness of their accusers. Chari- patience of the saints; he is cultivating that ty,' says an admirable French writer, ismeek and quiet spirit' of which his blessed that law which Jesus Christ came down to master gave at once the rule, the injunction, bring into the world, to repair the divisions and the praise which sin has introduced into it: to be the proof of the reconciliation of man with God, by bringing him into obedience to the divine law; to reconcile him to himself by subjugating his passions to his reason; and in fine to reconcile him to all mankind, by curing him of the desire to domineer over them.' But we put it out of our power to become the instruments of God in promoting the spiritual good of any one, if we stop up the avenue to his hear by violence or impru dence. We not only put it out of our power to do good to all whom we disgust, but are we not liable to some responsibility for the failure of all the good we might have done them, had we not forfeited our influence by our indiscretion? What we do not to others, in relieving their spiritual as well as bodily wants, Christ will punish as not having been done to himself. This is one of the cases in which our own reputation is so inseparably connected with that of religion, that we should be tender of one for the sake of the other. If all bitterness, and clamour, and malice, and evil speaking,' are expressly forbiden in ordinary cases, surely the probibition must more peculiarly apply to the case of religious controversialists. Suppose Voltaire and Hume had been left to take their measure of our religion (as one would really suppose they had) from the defences of Christianity by their very able contemporary, bishop Warburton.-When they saw this Goliah in talents and learning, dealing about his ponderous blows, attacking with the same powerful weapons, not the enemies only, but the friends of Christianity, who happened to see some points in a different light from himself; not meeting them as his opponents, but pouncing on them as his prey; not seeking to defend himself, but tearing them to peices; waging offensive war; delighting in unprovoked hostilitywhen they saw him thus advocate the christian cause, with a spirit diametrically opposite to Christianity, would they not exultingly exclaim, in different opposition to the exclamation of the apostolic age, See how these Christians hate one another! Whereas had his vast powers of mind and astonishing compass of knowledge been sanctified by the angelic meekness of archbishop Leighton, they would have been compelled to acknowl edge, if Christianity be false, it is after all so amiable that it deserves to be true. Might they not have applied to these two prelates what was said of Bossuet and Fenelon, ‘ l'un prouve la Religion, l'autre la fait aimer.' The modes of doing good in society are various. We should sharpen our discernment to discover them; and our zeal to put them in practice. If we cannot open man's eyes to the truth of religion by our arguments, we may perhaps open them to its beauty by our moderation. Though he may dislike Christianity in itself, he may, from admiring the forbearance of the Christian, be at last led to admire the principle from which it flowed. If he have hitherto refused to listen to the written evidences of religion, If we studiously contrive how to furnish the temper of her advocate may be a new the most complete triumph to infidels, conevidence of so engaging a kind, that his heart tentious theology would be our best contrimay be opened by the sweetness of the one vance. They enjoy the wounds the combatto the varieties of the other. He will at least ants inflict on each other, not so much from be brought to allow that that religion cannot the personal injury which either might susbe very bad, the fruits of which are so amia-tain, as from the conviction that every atble. The conduct of the disciple may in time bring him to the feet of the master. A new combination may be formed in his mind. He may begin to see what he had supposed antipathies reconciled, to unite two things which he thought as impossible to be brought together as the two poles-he may begin to couple candour with Christianity. But if the mild advocate fail to convince, Le may persuade; even if he fail to persuade, tack, however it may terminate, weakens the common cause. In all engagements with a foreign foe, they know that Christianity must come off triumphantly. All their hopes are founded on a civil war. If a forbearing temper should be maintained towards the irreligious, how much more by the professors of religion towards each other. As it is a lamentable instance of human infirmity that there is often much |