coming; and if it were, personal beauty is the gift of God, and, as in all his other gifts, the sin must arise out of the misuse or over-appreciation of it. I believe it is in the order of his designs, that every woman may, and perhaps ought to preserve that measure of personal agremens, which she receives from her Maker's hands, as far as consists with modesty, decency, and propriety, her station, age, and means. I am not writing upon the love of admiration; but if I may go out of my way to make a painful observation, I have been in company with religious females, when even the prohibited chain or necklace would have been some small relief, in the destitution of more modest covering.

We need not appeal again to the earth that He has filled, and the heavens that He has made, to prove that God consulted his own glory and goodness, and not our necessities, in the superfluities with which he has fitted and beautified the habitation of his creatures. That he so consulted the benefit as well as the happiness of mankind, can scarcely be denied, by any who have considered the constitution of man, and the relationship of society.

Immediately on the fall, the sentence of labour was pronounced; a most wise and pitiful sentence, although a portion of the curse-at once the most powerful check upon corruption, and the greatest alleviation of our misery. Next to that restraining grace which we suppose to be always in exercise, nothing saves the whole community of man from the extremity of sin and woe, but the necessity under which the great mass of people find themselves, of caring for their own existence, of employing themselves about the means to live. What would the

stupid peasant be, and in fact what is he, when, his labour suspended, he sits down to consider the privations of his lot? What is the less stupid, but more vicious artisan, when, for want of occupation, he begins to calculate the injustice of his fortunes? And why are the richest class, with all their appliances and means to boot,' so notoriously the most restless, and unsatisfied, and vicious, but because they have all their time, and faculties, and powers, on their own hands, and know not how to occupy and employ them? Yet where, except in the production of superfluities—and how, but in the permitted use of superfluities, has the beneficent wisdom of God provided for the accomplishment of this compassionate sentence? Can we not trace his providential care, in the slow discovery of natural properties, and gradual developement of our powers in applying them, in proportion as the increasing race of man made new inventions necessary to supply him with employment? And now, in the world's old age, with the terrors of a disoccupied population perpetually before us, from time to time relieved by some fresh invention, discovery, or contrivance, what would ensue upon the resolution, should it be generally adopted, that the use of superfluities is to be renounced, and, whatever the amount of our income, expenditure to be restricted to the decencies and necessities of life! Does the philanthropic spirit bound with joy at thought of this elysium; when all that we have above our wants will be given in charity, and there will be ease and sufficiency for all? We will not inquire of the political economist, what sort of a world we should inhabit by this time, had such a resplution obtained from the beginning: a little reflection

will instruet the simplest of us what would follow on its adoption now. How would our pauperized community enjoy our bounty and occupy their leisure? Would they serve God with it? We know they would not, and if they would they could not, for idleness is not the service he accepts. If they who now weave the ribbons, or, if you please, the flowers; they who dive for the pearl within its watery bed, or fetch the diamond from its dark hiding-place; and they that set the sail and ply the oar to bring our luxuries in; and they that carve the fret-work and paint the china, and devise the costly pattern, and the hundred others kept at work by even one of these useless productions-suppose them bidden to forego their labours, and accept from our charity what we determine no longer to expend upon their workmanship. Mortified dependence, dissolute idleness, and ultimate misery, would be the destiny of the greater part of the recipients of our alms: to the givers, I think it would be the relinquishment, rather than the fulfilment of their stewardship; to ease themselves of the responsibility of using for the benefit of all what is committed to them. I think it would be to refuse any longer to maintain the position assigned us, by reason of its difficulties ; to throw back to God his money, that there may be no questioning for its moderate, righteous and judicious use. I am not sure but we might risk to be of those who give all their goods to feed the poor, yet have not charity.

If we are not to do this, to denude ourselves of all that is superfluous to our necessities, it becomes a question merely of degree as respects the claims of charity and of personal holiness, in the expenditure

of what remains. Of the former we can only say generally, for we have never met with any fixed proportion that satisfied us; that they who spend in self-indulgent luxury what they know it would do more good to give away, and they that refuse to give on any due occasion, because they prefer to spend, will find their condemnation in the word of God; and in their conscience too, if they will let it speak. In the just and righteous expenditure of what remains, I think is to be met the real, the difficult, responsibility of every child of God, in a corrupted and corrupting world; in it, but not of it; the light that is to light it; the salt that is to salt it; and yet so separate from it, so distinct, so different, as never at any time to be confounded with it; a sympathizing participant in its sorrows and its welfare; a careful willing respondent to its claims; but not conformed to its fashions, nor led by its opinions, nor governed by its laws. It is a responsibility so difficult to those who have riches, that we might well prefer poverty, if we were allowed to choose; and purchase a release by giving all away, if so the order of providence permitted.

Not only is the Christian to use the good things of this life without abusing them, but he is to enjoy them, without loving them; to have them, without seeking them; to possess them, without supposing them to be his own. Paradoxical in terms, this is practically very simple, and with respect to the use of superfluities, perhaps does make the real distinction between the people of God and the people of the world. The Christian woman, for we must not forget where we are, who cares, with anything approaching to anxiety, about the decoration of her

house or person, who covets wealth for the sake of its superfluities, or envies wealth, because it can afford them whose heart is lifted up by what she has or cast down and ashamed for what she cannot have; who spends her thoughts in contriving for what is not easily within her reach, or her time in producing what she cannot afford to buy; be it gold or be it gems, be it ribbons or be it flowers, be it to the value of units or of thousands, brings a guilt upon the conscience that will never pertain to one who uses her superfluities as she uses her titles, because they belong to her condition, because they become her station, because it would require more thought, and attract more attention, and be really and truly more ostentatious to go without them; or even because they are pleasing to her taste, and agreeable to those around her, and a medium of communicating to others the pleasure to be derived from such indulgences as her fortunes providentially afford. How deeply the Christian conscience may be stained, must not I say, is stained, and in the present time, above all times, is tempted to stain itself with those aforesaid sins, is worthy, Madam, of the ablest of your contributors to develope. The wish to spend, not what we have, but what we have not got; to enjoy, not what God has given, but what he has denied us; to do with a little what others do with much; the contrivances to eke out our poverty, and manoeuvres to conceal it; the eagerness of getting, and the restlessness of wanting, and the mortification of not having, and all that soul-consuming care how to find means and meet expences, for things, which to go without, ought not to cost a sigh, or a thought of sadness, or