on a religious truth, and to maintain our hold, is no easy matter. Our understandings are not more ready to receive than our affections to lose it. We like to have an intellectual knowledge of divine things, but to cultivate a spiritual acquaintance with them cannot be effected at so cheap a rate. We can even more readily force ourselves to believe that which has no affinity with our understanding. than we can bring ourselves 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. There is such a thing as a mechanical christianity. There are good imitations of religion, so well executed and so resembling, as not only to deceive the spectator, but the artist. Selflove in its various artifices to deceive us to our ruin, sometimes makes use of a means, which, if properly used, is one of the most beneficial that can be devised to preserve us from its influence the perusal of pious books. But these books in the hands of the ignorant, the indolent, and the self-satisfied, produce an effect directly contrary to that which they were intended to produce, and which they actually do produce on minds prepared for the perusal. They inflate where they were intended to humble. As some hypochondriacs, who amuse their melancholy hours with consulting indiscriminately every medical book which falls in their way, fancy they find their own case in every page, their own ailment in the ailment of every patient, till they believe they actually feel every pain of which they read, though the work treats of cases diametrically opposite to their own:-so the religious valetudinarian, as unreasonably elated as the others are depressed, reads books descriptive of a highly religious state, with the same unhappy self-application. He feels his spiritual pulse by a watch that has no movements in common with it, yet he fancies that they go exactly alike. He dwells with delight on symptoms, not one of which belongs to him, and flatters himself with their supposed agreement. He observes in those books what are the signs of grace, and he observes them with complete self-application; he traces what are the evidences of being in God's favour, and those evidences he finds in himself. Self-ignorance appropriates truths faithfully stated but wholly inapplicable. The presumption of the novice arrogates to itself the experience of the advanced Christian. He is persuad ed that it is his own case, and seizes on the consolations which belong only to the most elevated piety. Self-knowledge would correct the jndgment. It would teach us to use the pattern held out as an original to copy, instead of leading us to fancy that we 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, self-love, 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 careful not to trust him again. But however frequently the bosom traitor deceive and misled, no such determined stand is made against his treachery: we lie as open to his next assault as if he had never betrayed us. We do not profit by the remembrance of the past delusion to guard against the future. Yet if another deceive us, it is only in matters respecting this world; but we deceive ourselves in things of eternal moment. The treachery of others can only affect our fortune or our fame, or at worst our peace; but the internal traitor may mislead us to our everlasting destruction. We are too much disposed to suspect others who probably have neither the inclination nor the power to injure us, but we seldom suspect our own heart though possesses and employs both. We ought however fairly to distinguish between the simple vanity and the hypocrisy of self-love. Those who content themselves with talking as if the praise of virtue implied the practice, and who expect to be thought good, because they commend goodness, only propagate the deceit which has misled themselves, whereas hypocrisy does not even believe herself. She has deeper motives; she has designs to answer, competitions to promote, projects to effect. But mere vanity can subsist on the thin air of the admiration she solicits, without intending to get any thing by it. She is gratuitous in her loquacity; for she is ready to display her own merit to those who have nothing to give in return, whose applause brings no profit, and whose censure no disgrace. 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 we have no correct means of determining; but we do it in things which relate immediately to ourselves, thus making not truth but the opinion of others our standard in points 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 applause. 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. 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 principle, can destroy it. We are still too much 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. Our appetite is not coarse enough perhaps to relish that popularity which ordinary ambition covets, but do we never feed in secret upon the applauses of more distinguished judges? Is not their having extolled our merit a confirmation of our discernment, and the chief ground of our high opinion of theirs? 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 prejudicc, 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 biases 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 mearsure, 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 may be laying out for the praise of generosity, while we are only exercising a sim ple act of justice. These refinements of selflove are the dangers only of spirits of the higher order, but to such they are dangers. The ingenuity of self-deceit is inexhaustible. If people extol us, we feel our good opinion of ourselves confirmed. If they dislike 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. We are too apt to calculate our own character unfairly in two ways; by referring to some one signal act of generosity, as if such acts were the common habit of our lives, and by treating our habitual faults, not as common habits, but occasional failures. There is scarcely any fault in another which offends 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 our-, selves to be; so full of himself as to have little leisure to attend to us. We are particularly quick 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. 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, feelings, actions, and motives we had not rather pry into than our own. Do we not use every 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 conceive that in parting with our vanity, we should part with the only comfort we have, that of being ignorant of our own faults. Self-knowledge would materially contribute, we affect to charge ourselves with more corrup to our happiness, by curing us of that self-sufficiency which is continually exposing us to mortifications. The hourly rubs and vexations which pride undergoes, is far more than an equivalent for the short intoxication of pleasure which it snatches. The enemy within is always in a confederacy with the enemy without, whether that enemy be the world or the devil. The domestic 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. Self-love has the talent of imitating whatever the world admires, even though it should be the Christian virtues. It leads us from our regard to reputation to avoid all vices, not only which would bring punishment but discredit by the commission. It can even assume the zeal and copy the activity of Christian charity. It communicates to our conduct those properties and graces, manifested 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 accidental substitute of humility, and the counterfeit brilliant is willingly worn by those who will not be at the expense of the jewel. tion 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 foreground of the canvass. Humility does not consist in telling our faults, but in bearing to be told of them; in hearing them patiently and even thankfully; in correcting ourselves when told; in not hating those who tell us of them. If we were little in our own eyes, and felt our real insignificance, we should avoid false humility as much as mere obvious vanity; but we seldom 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 We even carry our self-importance to the foot pleasures and gross voluptuousness. He will be of the throne of God. When prostrate there we led by his good taste perhaps not only to abhor are not required, it is true, to forget ourselves, the excesses of vice, but to admire the theory of but we are required to remember HIM. We have virtue. But it is only the crapule of vice which indeed much sin to lament, but we have also he will abhor. Exquisite gratifications, sober much mercy to adore. We have much to ask, luxury, incessant but not unmeasured enjoy-but we have likewise much to acknowledge. ment, form the principle of his plan of life, and if he observe a temperance in his pleasures, it is only because excess would take off the edge, destroy the zest, and abridge the gratification. By 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 unim. paired faculties, and triumphs in the dignity of his own character. 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 selflove, is to get the love of God and of our neighbour firmly rooted in the heart. Yet 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 principles of love and dependance form but one duty. 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. On the conduct of Christians in their intercourse 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 CHAP. XIV. with the irreligious. THE combination of integrity with discretion By the way, this sharp look-out of worldly men on the professors of religion, is not without very important uses. While it serves to promote circumspection in the real Christian, the detection to which it leads in the case of the hollow professor, forms a broad and useful line of distinction between two classes of characters so essentially distinct, and yet so frequently, so unjustly, and so malevolently confounded. is the precise point at which a serious Christian | vine moralist on the mount, and enforced by the must aim in his intercourse, and especially in apostle Peter, to distinguish for whose sake we his debates on religion, with men of the oppo- are calumniated. site 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 may be construed into compromise or evasion, into denying or concealing any christian truth, or shrinking from any commanded duty, in order to conciliate favour; he must, on the other hand, be scrupulously careful never to maintain a christian doctrine with The world believes, or at least affects to bean unchristian temper. In endeavouring to con- lieve, that the correct and elegant minded relivince he must be cautious not needlessly to irri-gious man is blind to those errors and infirmitate. He must distinguish between the honour ties, that eccentricity and bad taste, that proof God and the pride of his own character, and pensity to diverge from the straight line of pru. never be pertinaciously supporting the one, un- dence, which is discernible in some pious but der the pretence that he is only maintaining the ill-judging men, and which delight and gratify other. The dislike thus excited against the dis- the enemies of true piety, as furnishing_them putant is at once transferred to the principle, with so plausible a ground for censure. But if and the adversary's unfavourable opinion of re- the more judicious and better informed Chrisligion is augmented by the faults of its cham-tian bears with these infirmities, it is not that pion. At the same time, the intemperate champion puts it out of his power to be of any further service to the man whom his offensive manners have disgusted. A serious Christian, it is true, feels an honest indignation at hearing those truths on which his everlasting hopes depend, lightly treated. He cannot but feel his heart rise at the affront offered to his Maker. But instead of calling down fire from heaven on the reviler's head, he will raise a secret supplication to the God of heaven in his favour, which, if it change not the heart of his opponent, will not only tranquilize his own, but soften it towards his adversary; for we cannot easily hate the man for whom we pray. He who advocates the sacred cause of Christianity, should be particularly aware of fancying that his being religious will atone for his being disagreeable ; that his orthodoxy will justify his uncharitableness, or his zeal make up for his indiscretion. He must not persuade himself that he has been serving God, when he has only been gratifying his own resentment, when he has actually by a fiery defence prejudiced the cause which he 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 must be borne, and the silence must be observed. We sometimes see imprudent religionists glory in the attacks which their own indiscretion has invited. With more vanity than 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 occasioned. Now and then it is to be feared the censure may be deserved, and the high professor may possibly be but an indifferent moralist. Even a good man, a point we are not sufficiently ready to concede, may have been blameable in some instance on which his censures will naturally have kept a keen eye. On these occasions how forcibly does the pointed caution recur, which was implied by the diVOL. I. he does not clearly perceive and entirely condemn them. But he bears with what he disapproves for the sake of the zeal, the sincerity, the general usefulness of these defective characters: these good qualities are totally overlooked by the censurer, who is ever on the watch to aggravate the failings which Christian charity laments without extenuating. It bears 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. We are not ignorant how much truth itself offends, though unassociated with any thing that is displeasing. This furnishes an important rule not to add to the unavoidable offence, by mixing the faults of our own character with the cause we support; because we may be certain that the enemy will take care never to separate them. He will always voluntarily maintain the pernicious association in 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 unnecessarily increase the number of her enemies. Let her not have at once to sustain the assaults to which her divine character inevitably subjects her, and the obloquy to which the infirmities and foibles of her injudicious, and if there are any such, her unworthy champions expose her. 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 pretence for looking with horror on the publicans whom our Saviour regarded with compassionate tenderness, while he reprobated with keen severity the sins, and especially the censoriousness of their accusers. Charity,' says an admirable French writer, is that law which Jesus Christ came down to bring into the world, to repair the divisions 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 subju. 3 N gating his passions to his reason; and in fine to reconcile him to all mankind, by curing him of the desire to domincer over them.' temporary, 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 pieces; waging of fensive war; delighting in unprovoked hostility 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 heart by violence or imprudence. We not only put it out of our power to do good to all whom we disgust, but are we not liable to some respon sibility for the failure of all the good we might have done them, had we not forfeited our influ--when they saw him thus advocate the Chris. ence 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. ous. tian 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 acknowledge, 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 variWe 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 If we studiously contrive how to furnish the the Christian, be at last led to admire the prin- most complete triumph to infidels, contentious ciple from which it flowed. If he have hitherto theology would be our best contrivance. They refused to listen to the written evidences of re-enjoy the wounds the combatants inflict on each ligion, the temper of her advocate may be a new evidence of so engaging a kind, that his heart may be opened by the sweetness of the one to the varieties of the other. He will at least be brought to allow that that religion cannot be very bad, the fruits of which are so amiable. 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, he may persuade; even if he fail to persuade, he will at least leave on the mind of the adversary such favourable impressions, as may induce him to inquire farther. He may be able to employ on some future occasion, to more effectual purpose, the credit which his 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 if the temperate pleader should not be so happy as to produce any considerable effect on the mind of his antagonist, he is in any case promoting the interests of his own soul; he is at least imitating the faith and patience of the saints; he is cultivating that meek and quiet spirit' of which his blessed Master gave at once the rule, the injunction, and the praise. If all bitterness, and clamour, and malice, and evil speaking,' are expressly forbidden in ordinary cases, surely the prohibition 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 con. other, not so much from the personal injury which either might sustain, as from the conviction that every attack, 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 hostility carried on by good men, who profess the same faith; so it is a striking proof of the litigious nature of man that this spirit is less excited by broad distinctions, (such as conscience ought not to reconcile) than by shades of opinion, shades so few and light, that the world would not know they existed at all, if by their animosities the disputants were not so impatient to inform it. While we should never withhold a clear and honest avowal of the great principles of our religion, let us discreetly avoid dwelling on incon siderable distinctions, on which, as they do not affect the essentials either of faith or practice, we may allow another to maintain his opinion while we steadily hold fast our own. But in religious as in military warfare, it almost seems as if the hostility were great in proportion to the littleness of the point contested. We all remember when two great nations were on the point of being involved in war for a spot of ground in another hemisphere, so little known that the very name had scarcely reached us; so inconsiderable that its possession would have added nothing to the strength of either. In civil too, as well as in national and theological disputes, there is often most stress laid on the most indifferent things. Why would the Spanish Nootka Sound. |