view to mark his progress, and to serve as a guide to self-improvement, and this register is afterwards subjected to our observation, we are able to judge of the process of moral discipline by which he arrived at any prescribed measure of excellence and virtue, or the causes of his failure and deficiency; and we are better able to trace the motives by which he was influenced, and the effect of the peculiar circumstances in which he was placed. His real character will be better known and more justly appreciated, and it will be our own fault if we be not improved and benefited by the development.

To make and to consult such a record has not unfrequently been the practice of persons of studious habits and of serious dispositions, who wished to mark the employment of their time, the state of their feelings, the general tenour of their conduct, the efforts they have made in the pursuit of knowledge, the success or failure of them, and the measure of their advance or retrogression in wisdom, piety, and virtue. Such a memorial of their diligence or of their negligence may be a useful check upon that carelessness and indifference in the exercise of the mental faculties, to which human nature is too prone, and may be a guard against that waste of valuable portions of existence with which many are justly chargeable. What is so well adapted to individual improvement or has been found advantageous in the closet, if it be made public, may be of considerable use to others.

It may teach them how to redeem time, how to employ their minds, how to guard their affections, how to subdue their passions, and how to secure those advantages which another has experienced, or to avoid the evils which another has felt and described.

But it may be justly doubted whether there be not disadvantages attending such an attempt, even to attain so desirable an object. There are few, perhaps, who would make such a register with the faithfulness and regularity which are necessary to secure the benefit of recorded feelings and actions; who would be so impartial as to give a true representation of their principles and motives, or who are qualified to discover or to describe the real springs of their sentiments and conduct. Self-knowledge is allowed by all to be most difficult of attainment. The picture which is drawn by his own hand can scarcely be expected to be the likeness of the individual. Temptations will constantly arise to hide, even from himself, his own defects and failings, and to magnify his own attainments and virtues; so that to one who contemplates the portrait it will appear a delineation of features which the subject wished to be his own, rather than a description of what they really were. It is more than possible that the attempt to make such a register may become irksome and burdensome; it will then be less correct and impartial, and the very time which it will employ will be unwillingly devoted to it. In this

case it would be better spent in almost any other manner, and certainly would be more wisely and usefully employed in endeavouring to correct those errors, and to practise those duties, in the detail and delineation of which it is occupied. To one who has attended to the cultivation of his mind and to the dictates of a well-regulated and enlightened conscience, it will not be difficult to preserve such a guard over his temper and conduct as will considerably, if not completely and perfectly, control the irregularities to which he is subject, and to maintain such a sense of dependence and responsibility as will stimulate him to exercise that activity and diligence which are necessary for the right improvement of time and the faithful performance of duty. If this can be done without any written memento of self-government and discipline, he will be released from a task which few have resolution to perform, and in executing which all are in danger of becoming the dupes of presumption and vanity, or the victims of self-reproach and despondency; and he will be free from those snares and from that undue excitement to which even a sound mind is exposed, when an attempt is made to trace its operations, to depict its failings, or to estimate its well-intended labours and exertions, with a view of instituting a comparison with any former measure of excellence and improvement.

The subject of the following Memoir had accustomed himself to great watchfulness over his temper

and conduct. The early and deep impression of religion which had been made upon his mind, disposed him to exercise this watchfulness with great faithfulness and severity. The standard of human excellence which he prescribed to himself was such as might be expected from one whose mind was imbued with strong convictions of the perfections of that Being to whom he regarded himself as accountable, and with just views of that purity and consistency which are inculcated in the gospel; for, from this only safe conductor and guide he formed his notions of Christian virtue and Christian duty. It will appear, that he was much affected and influenced by those peculiar religious sentiments in which he had been educated; but they never seem to have opposed or counteracted the conviction of the necessity of uniform and steady regard to the precepts of that heavenly Instructor who hath admonished his disciples, that "whosoever breaketh the least of his commandments and teacheth men so, is guilty of all." Whatever importance he assigned to the belief of peculiar doctrines, he never imagined that faith could be substituted for obedience; nor was he less mindful of his imperfection and unworthiness because he sometimes felt assured that he was of the number of the elect, and partaker of the privileges to which they are admitted. The language of self-abasement and contrition which he uses is always that of a mind deeply humbled in the consciousness of sin, though the expression

of it must be understood to be the language of the sect to which he attached himself rather than the description of his own demerit and guilt.

To ascertain the manner and degree in which he observed the rules he prescribed to himself, Mr. Belsham kept a diary through almost the whole of a long and active life, in which he has registered the employment of his time and the nature of his feelings, and in which he has minutely recorded each impression, whether favourable or, as he esteemed it, worthy of blame. Doubtless it was by this strict account which he rendered to his own conscience, that he was able to accomplish so much, and that he maintained such a high character for integrity, piety, and zeal. This document is not the least valuable and interesting among the papers entrusted to me, and it is evident from the manner in which these papers were committed to my charge, that in later life Mr. Belsham contemplated the possibility of their being freely used to enable the public to judge, from the most authentic sources, of the character of a life which had been long and assiduously devoted to the investigation of religious truth, and which had been faithfully and actively spent in the service of his fellow-creatures.

The great and important change which Mr. Belsham's mind underwent from rigid orthodoxy, or Trinitarian or Calvinistic sentiments, to the notions

See Mr. Belsham's letter to the present writer, infra, dated June 21, 1829.