purifying and regulating their hearts according to the Christian model. Thus, while they learn to please others most effectually and most permanently, they will also improve themselves in such habits and virtues as will have a most benign influence in promoting their own enjoyment. They will have no occasion for deceit, or those tricks and stratagems which can never be practised without painful anxiety; without such doubts and uneasiness attending them, as no success, in the object they pursue, can possibly compensate their own bosoms will be calm and serene, uninjured and uninjurious, smooth as the stream which glides in its proper channel, and diffuses beauty and fertility on every plant which happily vegetates near its margin.

We are apt to reverence our fellow-creatures servilely. We idolize them; not indeed from philanthropy, but from a mean timidity, and an anxious regard for our own interest. We forget, in the attention we pay to the great, and indeed to all who can gratify our avarice or ambition, the reverence we owe to ourselves, and the duties we owe to God.

The reverence we owe to ourselves should teach us to have a particular regard to our own consciences; to please men, so far only as is consistent with pleasing our own hearts; that is, so far as is consistent with truth, honesty, and all our duties, moral and religious. It should teach us to practise, not what may advance our temporal interest only, or what may furnish a transient pleasure, but what will bring us peace at the last, and fit us for better society, than any which can be found on earth, that of angels, and of just men made perfect in heaven.

The reverence we owe to God should render us more solicitous to please him than men, however

exalted, however able to advance us to honour and profit; for, let us seriously reflect, how little will avail the favour of the world, and the greatest poten-: tates in it, against the displeasure of the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the Most High God.

SERMON XIII.

ON THE DUTY OF PREVENTING EVIL, BY ACTUAL COERCION, AS WELL AS BY ADVICE AND REMONSTRANCE.

1 SAM. XXV. 32, 33.-And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who sent thee this day to meet

me.

And blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, who hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with my own hand.

THE text exhibits a remarkable instance of human folly, and the happiness of restraining it. David had rashly engaged in a vindictive enterprise, which could not but redound to his disgrace, and involve him in guilt. He intended to avenge himself with his own hand, where there had been but a slight provocation; and to shed innocent blood, in a most unjust and dishonourable cause. But Abigail met him as he was on his journey, and, by a seasonable remonstrance, deterred him from the execution of his sanguinary purpose. On her representation, he sees his intention in its true light, and abbors it.' Exulting in the conquest over himself, he breaks out in the words of the text, which I have here selected for your present consideration.

I mean to take occasion from these words, to lay before you the wisdom and the kindness of preventing

mischief, either by good advice, or by more effectual precautions.

Nothing is more common than to hear parents deploring the profligacy of their children, when arrived at the manly age. The pleasure which their little ones afforded them, is then converted into anguish. Their own offspring is become a scourge to them. They wish, when perhaps it is too late, that they had exercised that wholesome discipline over them, which prudence directs and experience fully justifies.

The parent advises his son to pursue a wiser conduct, and laments his degeneracy; but the advice is too late. The taste of the young man is vitiated, his heart is corrupted, his habits are confirmed. Ruin and disgrace involve both the parent and the child in misery, which timely care might easily have prevented.

There are many cases worse than mere ignorance, and want of accomplishments or qualifications, which careless parents will have cause to deplore. The boy no sooner arrives at the years which should be years of discretion, than he shows the dispositions of a prodigal son. The parent is surprised, and ready to blame every thing and every person but himself, often the sole cause of the evil which he laments. He allowed his son, when a child, every licentious indulgence, and encouraged all his capricious wants. Unaccustomed to restraint, the young man cannot bear it with patience. He eagerly obeys the impulse of his passions and appetites. They grow more unruly by indulgence. The consequences are, indeed, severe punishments. The youth suffers much more than he ever enjoyed. Happy, if at last he grows wise by dear-bought experience! How much less trouble would have

been felt, less expense and less infamy incurred, if proper care had been taken, in early youth, to prevent, in the very bud, the growth of a vicious principle.

Health, peace, innocence, reputation, and fortune, might have been preserved uninjured by timely care, though they can seldom be recovered when once they are lost.

If these things were duly considered, none surely would be disposed to controvert the 'necessity of early instruction in piety and virtue, as well as in the polite accomplishments and the pursuits of science and elegant letters. The greater part of mankind are happily persuaded of this necessity; but yet there are some among the frivolous and pleasurable, who seem to pay little attention to it, and even to argue against all strictness and regularity of discipline. They usually suffer severely in consequence of their mistake, and are frequently found, in the advanced periods of life, to acknowledge it with shame and sorrow.

For the actual prevention of young persons from folly and ruinous expense and dissipation, let no one persuade himself that precept and admonition will be sufficient. They will indeed effect much; but, I think, it will be necessary to add to them, some real restraints, by the exercise of personal authority. Parents are too timid in the exertion of that power with which nature and reason have invested them, for the laudable purpose of preserving their inexperienced offspring from those dangers which themselves have remarked in the voyage of life. The following conduct may perhaps be advisable.

If a son show a disposition to loose and irregular pleasures, he should be removed from all places where temptations particularly abound. His pe

cuniary allowance should be diminished. He should be kept from theatres, and all other amusements more particularly dangerous; and at a proper age, should be led to form some virtuous connection, in which his passions may be gratified, consistently with honour, principle, health, and fortune. All this care might indeed fail, if the disposition were extremely vicious; but nothing would have been omitted for which a parent would deem himself culpable a child would thus have the best chance of becoming virtuous and happy, and the parent's sorrow, if the case should be incurable, would not receive any addition from self-condemnation.

I lay it down as a maxim, that to promote as much happiness, and to prevent as much evil as possible, is the duty of every good man; and it is a duty which he owes to mankind in general. How much more urgent to the performance of it, is the consideration, that the happiness of those whom we have been instrumental in introducing into a world where misery abounds, depends upon our conduct of them before they can conduct themselves with safety and propriety?

But many are deterred from the exercise of discipline on their children, by the idea that it is to be unreasonably severe on those whom they are bound by duty, and inclined by nature, to indulge. But they consider only immediate consequences, without any regard to the future and remote. That only is kind, which is essentially and ultimately beneficent. Now, improper and excessive indulgence pleases for the moment, but produces permanent misfortune.

Let us look forward to the age of maturity and confirmed manhood, or of old age; and let us ask our child in these stages of life, his real opinion, whether he approves excessive indulgence, or