a mere sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory of moral science; others, however, had before him put it in practice, and he had nothing to do but to tell what they had done, and to reduce their examples to precepts. Aristides had been just, before Socrates defined what justice was; Leonidas had died for his country, before Socrates made it a duty to love one's country; Sparta had been temperate before Socrates eulogized sobriety; and before he celebrated the praises of virtue, Greece had abounded in virtuous men. But from whom of all his countrymen could Jesus have derived that sublime and pure morality, of which he only has given us both the precept and the example? In the midst of the most licentious fanaticism, the voice of the sublimest wisdom was heard, and the simplicity of the most heroic virtue crowned one of the humblest of all the multitude. The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, is the most pleasant that could be desired! That of Jesus, expiring in torments, outraged, reviled, and execrated by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blessed the weeping executioner who presented it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating torture, prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes! if the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a God. Shall we say that the evangelic history is a mere fiction ?-it does not bear the stamp of fiction, but the contrary. The history of Socrates, which nobody doubts, is not as well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such an assertion, in fact, only shifts the difficulty, without removing it. It is more inconceivable that a number of persons should have agreed to fabricate this book, than that one only should have furnished the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the gospel, the marks of whose truths are so striking, so perfectly inimitable, that the inventor would be a more astonishing man than the hero.— ROUSSEAU. VIRTUES and discourses are like friends, necessary in all fortunes : but those are the best which are friends in our sadnesses, and support us in our sorrows and sad accidents. And in this sense no man that is virtuous can be friendless; nor hath any man reason to complain of the Divine Providence, or accuse the public disorder of things, or his own infelicity, since God hath appointed one remedy for all the evils in the world, and that is a contented spirit; for this alone makes a man pass through fire, and not be scorched; through seas, and not be drowned; through hunger and nakedness, and want nothing. For since all the evil in the world consists in the disagreeing between the object and the appetite, as when a man hath what he desires not, or desires what he hath not, or desires amiss; he that composes his spirit to the present accident, hath variety of instances for his virtue, but none to trouble him, because his desires enlarge not beyond his present fortune: and a wise man is placed in the variety of chances, like the nave or centre of a wheel, in the midst of all the circumvolutions and changes of posture, without violence or change, save that it turns gently in compliance with its changed parts, and is indifferent which part is up and which is down, for there is some virtue or other to be exercised, whatever happens, either patience or thanksgiving, love or fear, moderation or humility, charity or contentedness, and they are, every one of them, equally in order to his great end and immortal felicity: and beauty is not made by white or red, by black eyes and a round face, by a straight body and a smooth skin, but by a proportion to the fancy. No rules can make amiability; our minds and apprehensions make that, and so is our felicity; and we may be reconciled to poverty and a low fortune, if we suffer contentedness and the grace of God to make the proportions. For no man is poor that does not think himself so; but if, in a full fortune, with impatience he desires more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition. But because this grace of contentedness was the sum of all the old moral philosophy, and a great duty in Christianity, and of most universal use in the whole course of our lives, and the only instrument to ease the burdens of the world and the enmities of sad chances, it will not be amiss to press it by the proper arguments by which God hath bound it upon our spirits; it being fastened by reason and religion, by duty and interest, by necessity and conveniency, by example, and by the proposition of excellent rewards, no less than peace and felicity. Contentedness in all estates is a duty of religion; it is the great reasonableness of complying with the Divine Providence, which governs all the world, and hath so ordered us in the administration of his great family. He were a strange fool that should be angry because dogs and sheep need no shoes, and yet himself is full of care to get some. God hath supplied those needs to them by natural provisions, and to thee by an artificial, for he hath given thee reason to learn a trade, or some means to make or buy them, so that it only differs in the manner of our provision; and which had you rather want, shoes or reason? God is the master of the scenes; we must not choose which part we shall act. It concerns us only to be careful that we do it well, always saying, "If this please God, let it be as it is;" and we, who pray that God's will may be done in earth as it is in heaven, must remember that the angels do whatsoever is commanded them, and go wherever they are sent, and refuse no circumstances; and if their employment be crossed by a higher degree, they sit down in peace and rejoice in the event. Keep the station where God hath placed you, and you shall never long for things without, but sit at home feasting upon the Divine Providence and thy own reason, by which we are taught that it is necessary and reasonable to submit to God. Contentedness in all accidents brings great peace of spirit, and is the great and only instrument of temporal felicity. It removes the sting from the accident, and makes a man not to depend upon chance and the uncertain dispositions of men for his well-being, but only on God and his own spirit. We ourselves make our fortunes good or bad; and when God lets loose a tyrant upon us, or a sickness, or scorn, or a lessened fortune, if we fear to die, or know not to be patient, or are proud, or covetous, then the calamity sits heavy on us. But if we know how to manage a noble principle, and fear not death so much as a dishonest action, and think impatience a worse evil than a fever, and pride to be the biggest disgrace, and poverty to be infinitely desirable before the torments of covetousness, then we who now think vice to be so easy, and make it so familiar, and think the cure so impossible, shall quickly be of another mind, and reckon these accidents amongst things eligible. We are in the world like men playing at tables; the chance is not in our power, but to play it is; and when it is fallen we must manage it as we can; and let nothing trouble us; but when we do a base action, or speak like a fool, or think wickedly-these things God hath put into our power; but concerning those things which are wholly in the choice of another they cannot fall under our deliberation, and, therefore, neither are they fit for our passions. My fear may make me miserable, but it cannot prevent what another hath in his power and purpose; and prosperities can only be enjoyed by them who fear not at all to lose them; since the amazement and passion concerning the future takes off all the pleasures of the present possession. Therefore, if thou hast lost thy land, do not also lose thy constancy; and if thou must die a little sooner, yet do not die impatiently. For no chance is evil to him that is content, and to a man nothing is miserable unless it be unreasonable. No man can make another man to be his slave unless he hath first enslaved himself to life and death, to pleasure or pain, to hope or fear command these passions, and you are freer than the Parthian king.—Abridged from TAYLOR'S Holy Living.' MILTON ON HIS BLINDNESS. WHEN I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, MILTON. THE sacred history of the world, its plan, the Divine purposes in human life, the great truths and the prospects revealed to us by our Saviour, seem to me to be all founded on the two great principles of our intellectual nature-its immortality and its improvability. That mankind have not been generally what they ought to be, no one will dispute; that they are better than they have been, almost, if not quite, universally, who can study history and geography without perceiving? That mortality was attached to their earthly life, because they would not obey their Creator, nor be and do what he commanded and counselled, is the language of revelation at every period of its communications. That the Deity in all His interferences and legislations has sought to ameliorate His human race, by enjoining and desiring them to live and act in conformity with His wishes, is manifest to all who read what has been expressed by His authority and in His name. These facts and principles appear in all the sacred writings before our Saviour came. But when He disclosed His purposes and instructions, they were connected, inseparably, with our improvement and immortality. His future kingdom, the eternal world of which we are to be inhabitants, was presented by Him to our view as the certain sequel of our present being; and to this the everlasting nature of the soul has been adapted. But to make this state of our existence as happy, as it will be desirable, He called upon us to acquire the feelings, the qualities, and the habits; to adopt the ideas and views, and to accustom ourselves to the practice of the virtues and actions which He enjoined and illustrated. These requisitions attest the improvability of our nature, for if this could not be improved agreeably to them, it was useless to teach them. His principle was, that we were, in our usual state, sinning and offending beings; but that we were convertible and alterable from this condition, into the better state which He encouraged us to attain, and which would make human nature pleasing to its God. But this great change can be effectuated only by His assistance. This aid was promised if sought for; and what He taught as to the agency and efficacy of the Holy Spirit on the human mind, and of that spiritual regeneration which He mentioned, discloses and confirms to us the fact, that improvability is the natural property of every individual mind; and, therefore, at every period of our life we should remember that the two great certainties which are attached to our present personality, in its living state on this earth, are its immortality and its improvability; and it is indispensable to our welfare that we should always conduct and regulate it with reference to these its qualities, which are unalienable from it; but which, being so, require such a use and course of our present life, as will be consistent with them, and congruous with their inextinguishable reality, and promotive of their good results. These considerations present to us one vast advantage of lengthened life, to which every one may make it conducive, and which attaches to it a value so inestimable as to be an object for our earnest desire; this is, that the longer we live the more improvements we may acquire in our present state of being, and the more advanced we then shall be in that progression and melioration of our nature, to which the inspired Christian teachers so emphatically invite us. Age and longevity are peculiarly favourable to these results, and have been designed to be so. The excitements of those passions and appetites which, in younger life, create a contest |