I HAVE ever found in my progress through life, that acting for the public, if we do always what is right, the approbation denied in the beginning will surely follow us in the end. It is from posterity we are to expect remuneration for the sacrifices we are making for their service of time, quiet, and good will. And I fear 16. 99. not the appeal. T HIS LETTER will, to you, be as one from the dead. ence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. 16. 110. So shall the life into which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable happi ness. A DECALOGUE of canons for observation in practical life: 16. III. 1. Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day. 2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself. 3. Never spend your money before you have it. 4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap: it will be dear to you. 5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold. 6. We never repent of having eaten too little. 7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly. 8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened. 9. Take things always by their smooth handle. 10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred. W HEN men meet together, they will make business if they have none; they will collate their grievances; some real, some imaginary, all highly painted; they will communicate to each other the sparks of discontent; and these may engender a flame which will consume their particular, as well as the gen 17. 91. eral, happiness. An industrious farmer occupies a more dignified place in the scale of beings, whether moral or political, than a lazy lounger, valuing himself on his family, too proud to work, and drawing out a miserable existence, by eating on the surplus of other men's labor, which is the sacred fund of the helpless poor./ I LONG to be in the midst of the children, and have more pleasure in their little follies than in the wisdom of the wise. 18. 234. A S FOR myself, I weaken very sensibly, yet with such a continuance of good health as makes me fear I shall wear out very tediously, which is not what one would wish. I see no comfort in outliving one's friends, and remaining a mere monument of the times which are past. I withdraw myself as much as 18. 297. possible from politics, and gladly shelter myself under the wings of the generation for which, in our day, we have labored faithfully to provide shelter. MT INE IS the next turn, and I shall meet it with good will, for after one's friends are all gone before them, and our faculties leaving us, one by one, why wish to linger in mere vegetation-as a solitary trunk in a desolate field, from which all its former companions have disappeared? 18. 310. T HE SOCIETY of our children is the sovereign balm of life, and the older we grow the more we need it to fill up the void made by the daily losses of the companions and friends of our youth. 18. 320. T CHAPTER IV. RELIGIOUS VIEWS HE laws of nature have withheld from us the means of physical knowledge of the country of spirits, and revelation has for reasons unknown to us, chosen to leave us in the dark, as we were. When I was young I was fond of the speculations which seemed to promise some insight into that hidden country, but observing at 10. 299. length that they left me in the same ignorance in which they found me, I have for many years ceased to read or think concerning them, and have reposed my head upon the pillow of ignorance which a benevolent Creator has made so soft for us, knowing how much we should have use for it./ I have thought it better, by nourishing the good passions and controlling the bad, to merit an inheritance in a state of being of which I can know but little, and to trust for the future to Him who has been so good for the past. T O the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. 10. 379. other. . A S to myself, my religious reading has long been confined to the moral branch of religion, which is the same in all religions, while in that branch which con sists of dogmas, all differ, all have a different set. 12. 237. Ο F all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus. He who follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he cannot comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his doctrines by those who, calling themselves his special 13. 377. followers and favorites would make him come into the world to lay snares for all understandin all essential points you and I ings but theirs. . are of the same religion and I am too old to go into inquiries and changes of the unessential. M* 13. 387. I Y principle is to do whatever is right, and leave consequences to him who has the disposal of them. N extracting the pure principles which (Jesus) taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves there will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals 13. 389. which has ever been offered to man. T HE doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them. 14. 149. D ISPUTE as long as we will on religious tenets, our reason at last must ultimately decide, as it is the only oracle which God has given us to determine |