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petites and passions that had been nourished by habit till they were grown up to gigantic strength. A struggle, in which, though virtue gain the victory, it is gained at the expense of a self-denial, of which the pain is comparable to that occasioned by cutting off a hand, or plucking out an eye. So true is it, that vicious habits are either our ruin and destruction, or, at the best, they will be a plague to us, however much we may wish and strive to uproot them utterly from our hearts.

It was with reference to the almost invincible force of habit, that the wise man penned the aphorism so worthy to be put in letters of gold, and hung up in the mansion of every rising family:-"Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old he will not de

part from it." Upon the same principle of the power of habit, if, reversing the aphorism, you train up your child in the way he should not go; if you countenance his faults; if you encourage, rather than check his vices, there are many chances to one, that shame and ruin will be his portion. But though this is clearly the voice of truth and experience, yet many infatuated parents lull themselves in the expectation that the faults of their children will be cured by time: a notion no less fatal than false. Indeed, time may perchance correct the errors of inexperience, or the mere follies of childhood and immature youth; but not immoralities-not real viciousness of disposition and action-not falsehood, fraud, profaneness, profligacy, or any real vice that can be named. Diseases of the mind, like those of the body, usually become the more inveterate by time. Time ripens the inceptive evil into habit; and time again strengthens and confirms the incipient habit. Every day adds somewhat to its strength; every new indulgence gives it a firmer root; and it incorporates itself at last with the very fibres of the heart. One long accustomed to almost any evil, finds himself clutched thereby as in the grasp of a giant.

See the knurly oak, which no arm of flesh can bend, which nothing but the bolt of heaven can rive:--this same oak was once a pliant twig.

Guard, then, with utmost care-let parents guard

their children, and let all those of the young who have come to years of discretion, guard themselves--against the inceptive ingress of any and every vicious habit: for

-When the fox has once got in his nose,
He soon finds means to make his body enter."

SHAKSPEARE.

CHAP. LXV.

Of the World.

Two English poets, of eminent but very unequal genius, are diametrically in opposition to one another in their descriptions of the same great object-The World. The following lines of Milton give only the bright side of the picture:

"Wherefore did nature pour her bounties forth
With such a full and unwithdrawing hand:
Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks,
Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable;
But all to please and sate the curious taste,
And give unbounded pleasure unto man?"

On the contrary, the disappointed Dr. Young, contemplating the World through the spleen and gloom of his own humor, describes it as an abode altogether dismal; as if the whole landscape of human life were overspread with unmingled gloom and sorrow and wo.

"A part, how small, of this terraqueous globe

Is tenanted by man! the rest a waste,

Rocks, deserts, frozen seas, and burning sands,

Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings and death!
Such is earth's melancholy map!"

A melancholy map indeed; but, thank God, not the

true one.

There are some who seem to make it a point of conscience to speak disparagingly of the world they live

in, as if they thought it were honoring the Maker to despise his workmanship. True enough, it is an evil world; and why? It is not so of itself, but by reason of the evilness of the race of moral beings that inhabit it, It is the moral, rather than the natural map of the world, that is unamiable and hideous.

The original frame of the world was good: a commodious, beautiful, and superb mansion, altogether fit for the abode of an order of sinless creatures compounded of the rational and the animal natures. And notwithstanding the frightful change it underwent by means of the apostacy, it is still, in itself, a good world; that is to say, it is a building well adapted to the condition of the guilty tenants-" prisoners of hope"-who are destined to pass a short residence therein. What though the "thorn and the thistle," the noxious weed, and the prickly briar, grow up spontaneously, whilst plants and trees that are good for food must be cultivated with great care and toil? And what though man is impelled to eat his bread in the sweat of his face, and to be daily mustering up the resources of his mind and body in order to reduce stubborn matter to his use and convenience? All this is entirely befitting his present condition, to wit, the depravation of his affections, appetites and passions, and his state of trial; it precludes the possibility of general idleness, which would render him more vicious by many degrees than he is now. What though crosses and disappointments, sickness and sorrow, are common to the lot of man, and there is such an emptiness or deficiency in even the best of his enjoyments, that not a single individual of the whole race is in all respects happy? These very evils are preventions of moral evil. Through the divine influence, in a thousand instances they curb our passions, humanize our dispositions, and bring our minds to a right state of recollection and to new and better purposes of action. And finally, what though while worldly enjoyments are ever mixed with alloy and are ever unsatisfactory, life itself is frail and fleeting? What though death is daily mowing down his thousands and tens of thousands without distinction of age or degree? Awful as is this law of mortality, and clearly evincive as it is of original

transgression, it is a dispensation of which there is moral necessity. If men were, in this world, immortal, or held their lives, upon a secure lease, for hundreds of years, in all probability a great proportion of them would extend their transgressions far beyond the present bounds of human depravity. The consciousness of the shortness and brittleness of life, bridles in avarice and ambition. The fear of death is a strong curb upon appetite and passion. Death breaks in pieces gigantic schemes of oppression, delivers the world from unfeeling oppressors, scatters abroad the unrighteous hoards of avaricious worldlings, and is the great humbler of upstart pride and arrogance.

It is, I repeat, the moral condition and conduct of the tenant that mars the beauty and poisons the comforts of the tenement. The promised "new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness," would be no unhappy world even with the physical form and properties of the one which we inhabit.

Were the heavens above black as sackcloth, or glaring with light of a frightful hue, and were the earth beneath us presenting to our senses nothing but objects of disgust and horror; then indeed the world would correspond with the rueful descriptions which querulous genius has given of it. Then indeed the following lines of poetry would possess no less truth than beauty:

"For ah! what is there of inferior birth,

That breathes, or creeps upon the dust of earth,
What wretched creature, of what wretched kind,
Than man more weak, calamitous and blind?”

But the truth is, though fallen man is weak, and blind, and sinful, yet his earthly condition, so far from being calamitous beyond that of all other creatures, is attended with a great many circumstances of comfort and delight.

The earth, even in its present state, is filled with the goodness of the beneficient Creator; and Man is the object of his especial care and bounty. Is it nothing that, above and around us, light and colors, with their corresponding shades, are infinitely diversified, to soothe and gratify the eye? That we are furnished with

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such sweet and melodious sounds to charm the ear? That the earth affords such a boundless variety to delight the palate? That it is decked with the enamel of innumerable flowers of varied colours and delicious fragrance? That by a nice admixture of the different species of air, the atmosphere is so exactly fitted for respiration? That the silk-worm spins to adorn, the sheep bears a fleece to warm, and the ground itself yields the rudiments of fine linen to array our frail bodies? That, in all parts of the world, there is furnished a supply of medicaments for the particular diseases of the climate? That Fire, Air, and Water, along with a great variety of minerals, are made, in so many ways, to minister to the convenience and adornment as well as to the subsistence of our race ?-Is all this aggregate of earthly benefits and blessings to be accounted as nothing? Shall Man, loaded as he is with so many unmerited temporal blessings, complain and fret because they are mixed with natural evil? Especially shall he do it, when a full share of the calamities which he suffers are brought upon him, not by the direct hand of Providence, but by his own follies and crimes ?

To love the world more than Him who made it, and life more than him who gave it, is that mammonism which is base and criminal. But a moderate or subordinate love of the world, of life, and of all its innocent enjoyments, along with lively gratitude to the Donor, is what becomes our rational and moral nature. Whereas, on the other hand, to think or speak contemptuously of the common gifts of Providence, betokens as little of humility as of thankfulness.

CHAP. LXVI.

Of the attention due both to mind and body.

"To hold the Golden mean

To keep the end in view, and follow nature."

THE union of an eminent degree of moral, intellectual, and literary endowments, with such bodily activity

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