to take? Will it help him onward to his destination, when he is bewildered, and unable to decide for himself, to find some one who can assure him of the right course? Life is a journey. Every step we take in it brings us to something new, something unexpected, and perhaps entirely different from that which was looked for. Those who have gone through it before us, have left us their instructions in what manner it is to be undertaken and accomplished. They tell us of their own troubles and difficulties; they warn us how to avoid the like in our own journey. Which is wisest-to listen to them, and weigh the worth of their warning, or to push on heedlessly, and take the consequences?

HEALTH.

We suppose that every child, of the ages last spoken of, can form some opinion of the value of health. Most of them have suffered, more or less, by that time. They are now old enough to consider the purposes for which life has been given to them. They then feel that the purpose is to be pleased and gratified; to want and to have; and that restraint is disagreeable. But let them remember that life is a whole; that though all of them will not, yet some of them will, attain to its longest duration, and that it is wholly uncertain to whom that lot will fall. Long life may depend, and often does depend on what children do, or omit, at an early age. Among the first gratifications which are looked for at this period, is the indulgence of the appetite for food. Here comes in a rigid law of the Creator. It cannot be broken without consequent suffering, nor repeatedly broken without impairing, and perhaps destroying, the material frame which has been described as so fearfully and wonderfully made. To require of that delicate machinery, on which the action of life depends, that which it is not qualified to do, and which it cannot do-to force it to do that which is offensive to it-and to make this requisition habitually-is a sin against natural law. Its punish ments are well known. The restless sleep, the heavy head, the many sensations of uneasiness, the positive pain, the disgusting remedies, are the punishments which follow. They are not all. Nature loses its charms, companions their interest, duties become irksome, the mind hates its labour, penalties are incurred, parents or teachers are regarded with displeasure. These are the fruits of momentary gratification of the appetites. On the other band, there is a law of nature that food shall be grateful. It is required to supply the daily waste-to continue life. If there were not a craving want, we should take food as a mere necessary duty. It is kindly made to be a pleasure, and, like every other pleasure, it is to be used, and not abused. Thus, by ignorant or wilful pursuit of pleasure, we violate a law which brings with its just punishment not only the loss of the like pleasure for a time to come, but also pain and suffering from indispensable remedies. When children are sick, they are subjects of tenderness and pity; but in most instances they rather deserve to be punished, for they have broken a law wilfully, since they have disregarded their own experience. As to kinds of food, nature is not unreasonably nice about this: that which it complains of is quantity.

CLEANLINESS.

This is not a mere matter of decency. It is one of the positive commands arising from the constituted order of things. Be it remembered, that every thing that lives, vegetable or animal, is wasting while life continues; and that all which is sent forth through the millions of openings by the skin, has run its round, and is lifeless; and *hat more than half of all the food taken comes forth in this manner. If perspiration, sensible and insensible, be permitted to rest on the skin, and stop the way of that which is coming, nature is offended, and will show that

she is so.

Such neglect is one of the causes of disease. This fact was probably well known to eastern nations, since it was part of their religious duty to cleanse the skin. These nations were ignorant of the modern com fort of wearing a garment next the skin which can be frequently changed. The absence of this comfort was one of the causes of those dreadful diseases of which we read, and which are now unknown among Christian nations. There are classes of labourers and mechanics, whose health would be preserved, and their lives prolonged, if they knew how much depended on periodical cleansing. It may be said that there is a connection between cleanliness and moral feeling. Perhaps it may be going too far to say, that those who habitually disregard cleanliness, and prefer to be dirty, have no moral perception; but it may be truly said, that those who are morally sensitive are the more so from respecting this virtue. There is a close affinity between moral depravity and physical degradation. The vicious poor are always shockingly filthy: the depraved rich are visited by worse penalties: they may have clean garments; but what can wash away the impurities which vice has made part of themselves? It is not for one's self only that the virtue of cleanliness commends itself. Every one comes within the observation of others. However uncleanly one may be himself, he is not the less offended at the like neglect in those whom he observes. Now, it is every one's duty to himself to recommend himself to others, so far as he innocently and reasonably can, and to obtain their respect. Clean and costly garments may fall very short of doing this, if it be seen that they are a covering for the neglect of this important law. If there be a lovely object to the human eye, it is a clean, clearfaced, healthy, innocent, neatly-clad, happy child. There are few children who may not, if they will, be neatly dressed, for this does not depend on that of which the dress is made. There are fewer who may not have a clear skin, and healthy look, if they are properly fed, and sleep in pure air. There are none who may not have a clean skin; for we speak to those who are old enough to judge for themselves. And let it be added, for their inducement, that, in obeying the command to be clean, they are performing a moral duty; in neglecting it, they are inflicting an evil on themselves in two ways—first, in diminishing their own comfort; second, in losing the esteem of others.

AIR.

Among the generally unknown causes of loss of health, is the respiration of impure air. The congregation of many persons in one apartment, especially when artificial light, in great quantity, is permitted, is a cause of more maladies than is commonly supposed. Three causes, in such case, combine to destroy the fitness of the air for respiration—the animal heat of the assembly, the lights, and the breathing of the same air again and again. There must be such assemblies. The remedy is proper ventilation. The smoke of lamps has frequently occasioned death. No lamp is properly trimmed if it emit any thing more than a pure bright flame. It is à common practice to keep sleeping apartments shut up. If there he several persons in a small room which has been shut up for several hours, it would be shocking to know how often they must breathe again and again the same air, and how unfit it is to be breathed after it has once visited the lungs. Add to this the impurity of the air, which is continually in contact with the furniture prepared and constantly used for sleeping, in an unaired apartment. It is not mere nicety, or fastidious delicacy, which requires that the pure air should be admitted where the human lungs are in action, but it is a law as old as the creation of man, and cannot be disregarded. A skilful observer might select among many, from the ap pearance of the countenances, those who have just lef

an apartment in which they have been respiring for ours a spoiled atmosphere. No doubt that this cause, long continued, so affects the whole mass of blood as to bring on many diseases. If pure air be peculiarly necessary to any class of persons, it is so to children. We believe a more useful suggestion could not be made on the subject of health to the whole community, than to Inv te them to respect this law of nature-that there cannot be perfect health where the air is impure, and that this applies especially to apartments appropriated to sleep. Visiting friends are often put into sleeping apartments which have not been opened for days and weeks; this is far enough from kind treatment, however innocently it be done.

TIME.

Every person connects himself, in his usual thoughts of himself, with all the lapse of time in which he can remember, and with all the lapse of time through which he expects to live. This he calls his life. He does not live in time that is past, nor in time that is to come. He actually lives only in the present moment. Yet he feels that he lives in the past, and will live in the time to come, because the past, the present, and the future, are so connected that he cannot separate them. It is, then, a law, prescribed to us, from which no one can free himself, that he shall suffer in the passing moment for the wrongs done in time gone by, and for the evils of which he dreads the approach. As this is certainly so, how little does he regard the operation of inflexible law, who provides for himself a load of self-reproach, for any gratification which he can procure by error or by crime!

Let us lay out of the case those errors and crimes which have been alluded to, and consider negligences and follies. Man was meant for action, and his actions were intended to enable him to secure good to himself. Good to himself depends on the performance of his duties to himself. Duty to himself requires that he should improve his faculties, and should avail himself of all the opportunities given to him for that purpose. The hours, then, which are permitted to slide by without any improvement, are lost. In so losing them, he breaks the law of the Creator. Apply this to the vocations in which one is to cultivate his mind in any business, mechanical, scientific, or learned. When one sees himself surpassed by others, and left far in the rear; when he is called on to measure himself against another; and when he sees that comparisons are made between him and others, greatly to his disadvantage-he may feel, and most men do feel, that they are thus depreciated because the precious time which was allotted to improvement has been passed in trifling amusements or in idle pursuits. To some minds, the suffering from such causes is extremely acute. They have no one to blame but themselves. The bitter remembrance which they have of the past, as connected with the present and the future, is the punishment for breaking a positive law. They may console themselves, perhaps, with the firm resolution, that they will repair the wrong done in the past time by diligence in the time to come; but they find that time brings with it its own demands. They are fortunate, indeed, if they can do in one space that which belongs to it, and that also which belonged to another and in another season of life. One cannot innocently say his time is his own, and that he may dispose of it as he pleases. His time is his life. It is given to him in trust. Like other trustees, he will be held to an account, in which there is no possibility of concealment, and where nothing will depend on proof. It may be supposed that it will be said to him, There was confided to your use a term of time; you knew, or could know, the laws prescribed to you in performing your trust: are you come from that trust to render an account of it, burdened with reproach from your own conscience, and with marks of guilt which you VOL. II.-102

cannot hide? or, are you come without any advancement in the knowledge of your duties, and with no other account than that your days rolled by in childish pursuits or idle amusement, no wiser when you were severed from the world than when you left the cradle of infancy? or, are you come with the exalted acquirements which you might have, and with that innocence and purity which you would have, if you had read the laws of the created world, and those which have been revealed and placed before your eyes? Where have you read in these laws, that no duties to yourself, and to your associates, nor to the Lawgiver, were enjoined upon you? Have you not been told by every breath you draw, by every movement of your frame, by every thought of your immortal mind, by every just pleasure that you have had, by every pang that you have suffered, and by all that you have been made capable of perceiving and learning, that there were laws prescribed to you in your trust, and that an account of your stewardship would be exacted from you by a Judge who cannot be deceived?

SELF-LOVE.

It is an invariable law of nature, that every human being shall do those acts which he thinks will secure good to him, and that he shall avoid those acts which will occasion evil to him. Why, then, should not every one do any and every act in his power by which his own will may be gratified, and avoid doing any and every act which is disagreeable to him? The only answer that can be given to this question is, that man is a free agent, intrusted with the power, and charged with the duty, of ascertaining for himself what is good and what is evil; and that this power and duty extend to those with whom he dwells in society, and also to his Creator

Children always conform to the natural impulse of self-love, until they learn, from the discipline which is applied to them, that they cannot have their own will without subjecting themselves to a suffering, the dread of which controls the natural impulse. They learn, after a time, that the greater good lies in giving up what they will to do, and doing what is required of them, rather than to meet the certain consequences. We think that the whole science of morals will be found in the principles contained in the truth above stated.

Self-love is just as strong throughout life as it is in childhood. It is that quality of our nature to which all excellence may be referred; but it is also that to which all unworthiness may be referred. As the dread of punishment, or an unwillingness to displease those whose kindness a child desires, will restrain him, or put him into action; so, in more advanced life, the dread of suffering a certain or probable evil, and the certainty of losing the good will of others, will restrain or impel to act. With those whose minds have been properly disciplined, and who have learned to comprehend their relation to the Creator, there is a far higher motive, which is founded in a submission to the Creator's laws. As one goes on in life, he may or may not acquire more and more clear and just perceptions of what will be the greatest good to himself, and how he can obtain it. It is a self-evident proposition, that if a person could certainly know what it would be best for him to do, or not to do, in relation to all things and persons, and under all circumstances, and if he should conform to this knowledge, he would best obey the impulse of self-love, and most exactly conform to the laws prescribed for his good.

It cannot be too often impressed upon the youthful mind, that life is to be taken as a whole: for if this extended view be not taken, it must frequently happen that it will seem right in certain circumstances, and when the view is limited to these circumstances, that certain acts may be done or avoided as the greatest good. Yet, if the consequences could be foreseen, they would disclose that this seeming good would turn out to be a

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positive evil. It often seems good to the young to avoid the performance of labours which are assigned to them, and to spend in amusement the time which should be devoted to fit them for duties which will be incident to their future condition. This misapprehension of good is to be lamented; but with some this is not all. Their own self-love prompts them to engage in a course of folly, so that not only do they fail to obtain that which is real good, but they find, under the mask of pleasure, that which proves them to be the most grievous suffering. The same truth runs, in an endless variety of forms, into manhood, and through all the stages of life. We are impelled by self-love not only to provide for the craving wants of our nature, but to seek pleasure, riches, power, distinction, and luxuries. These propensities are given for wise and beneficent purposes. It is the misapplication of them, as seen in the world, which constitutes human misery. He is called brave and honourable who defends himself, even at the risk of life, against those who would do to him that injustice and wrong which would make the gift of life of no value. But the brave, who invade the rights of others, and subject them, by violence, to losses and to sufferings, without cause, misapply this principle of action. To get riches by honest industry, or the reasonable exercise of one's talents, is a commendable use of self-love. To get riches by unfair and dishonest means, to hoard them up, and to brood over them in secret, is a pitiful misuse of this commendable impulse. To have power over one's fellow-men, and to use it faithfully, and for their benefit, is a relation which one may honestly and commendably desire, as a reasonable exercise of self-love. To seek such power by deceitful representations, and to obtain it by violence and fraud, and to use it for purposes of supposed self-benefit, and to the injury and oppression of others, is another form of self-love. But there are few, if any cases, in the history of mankind, in which selflove has appeared in the latter form, without eventually overwhelming the agent with disappointment and sorrow. It is true that for a time such an one may seem to flourish in his schemes, and command the applauses of those who look up to him in his apparently fortunate elevation; but, in the very nature of things, if his heart could be sounded, there is not one whom he looks down upon, who is not more at ease than himself. His day of humiliation may be at hand, in the course of events which he cannot control; and if not, he learns, when it is too late to correct his error, that he has misapplied the impulse of self-love. This misapplication is to be seen in many cases of daily occurrence, and in things of little, as well as in those of comparatively great, importance. The principle is everywhere the same.

We shall be answered, perhaps, that all this is incident to human nature. There is no help, it is said, for these evils. Every boy who has learned Latin repeats the maxim, Humanum est errare (It is human to err). A more mischievous maxim was never invented. If men understood, as most certainly they may do, that they need not err, and that it is best for them they should not, they would rather adopt as a maxim that none but the wilfully ignorant, and the wilfully foolish, err. Such a state of things is yet afar off. It may seem to be foolish, indeed, to assert that any society should ever come to be so well informed as to make a proper use of self-love. Let us not despair. We may improve very slowly; yet, if every one does even the little that he can, in showing, by precept and example, what things a rational and accountable being should desire, and what he should avoid and reject, certainly the time may come when self-love will never be so misapplied as to be necessarily followed by penitence and sorrow.

Will it be denied that there is a certain best course of action for every human being, in every possible condition in which he may find himself? Or, that no small

proportion of human suffering arises from ot naving discerned that it was best, in past circumstances, to have acted differently, or not to have acted at all? Or, that whether one did or did not act, in the supposed case, that his motive was to secure to himself the greatest good of which that case was supposed to allow? If these things cannot be denied, then the great end of life is so to regulate self-love as that it may secure the greatest good. Let us suppose that every person in society knew what it would be best for him to do or not to do, so that his physical, intellectual, and moral condition, should be as good as he could make it. His self-love would never be directed to any end which would impair his bodily powers, or keep his mind in ignorance, or misinformed, or make him a subject of reproach or contempt in bis own view, or in that of others. This, it will be said, is an impossible state of things. So it was said that it would be impossible to root out the use of ardent spirits. This great change is not wholly accomplished; but does any one doubt that great advance has been made towards its entire abolition? Let us go on, then, in the work of improvement. Let every one try to show the proper uses of self-love. The day may come when every one will admit that all the sufferings which may visit the human family are of their own making, those only excepted which arise from the general laws of the Creator. As to those, they may be greatly mitigated by intelligent morai agency. When these come, they can and will be endured with piety and resignation, if the sufferer can console himself with the certainty that he has done no wrong thing, nor neglected any proper one, to which the cause of his sufferings may be referred.

LABOUR.

It is commonly considered that labour is the curse declared to mankind, as a consequence of the transgression of the first man. It is foreign to our purpose to enter into any discussion as to the true meaning of this historical or allegorical account; the Christian revelation may not be dependent on a literal understanding of it. However this may be regarded under the influence of further reasonable research, we must take man as he is; and so considering him, labour is not an evil, but a pleasure. Is it a curse to man, as he now is, to be enabled by labour to comprehend the existence of the Deity, and the beauty and utility of his works? to adorn the earth and bring its productive power into action? to apply the material substances of the earth to reasonable use, convenience, and ornament? to expand and improve the human mind? to cultivate and strengthen the morai power? Certainly these are the effects of labour; and labour so applied constitutes man's highest happiness.

There are two kinds of labour:-1. Mere bodily labour; 2. Labour of the mind. These two are sometimes necessarily combined. The mind and the body demand some sort of employment. No one whose mind is free from natural defect can prevent its action. It will think of something, good or evil, profitable or foolish Every one who attends to the operations of his own mind, must be convinced that this is so. The body and limbs cannot be kept in any one position for any con siderable space of time, unless they have been in action and demand repose. If it were painful to us to direct the action of the mind to useful labour, and if it were distressing or inconvenient to us to exercise our muscles for purposes which we believe to be proper, then it might be that labour is a curse; but many, nay all, who require of the mind to perform its duties to any useful purpose, and especially those who have disciplined the mind to an accustomed service, find that the absence of employment is an affliction. We cannot see now this should be otherwise, if we rightly comprehend man's relation to the universe, of which he constitutes a neces sary part.