and let no one palliate to himself the existence of jealousy, or rather encourage its development on this ground; or he will harbour in his bosom a serpent, whose sting will never be extracted, whose poison will circulate through every part of the character, and will influence every act and thought, will be brought into activity by the slightest circumstance, and will descend to those "trifles light as air," which to the jealous, are invested with a sacredness and certainty, that no argument can dissipate; and which are confirmed by time, and deepened by opposition, and augmented by suspicion, and magnified by distrust, and realized by passion.

The first influence of jealousy may be traced in children; and in their minds, is most intimately associated with envy, a principle with which it is at all times very nearly allied. Thus it will often arise from one infant possessing a toy, or any other mark of favour, which the other has not; it will first feel the passion of envy for the valuable good, whatever it may be, and this will eventually lead to jealousy of the individual, who has vouchsafed the boon! This feeling which in its early stage, is only occasionally excited, will by frequent repetition become habitual; and habit will ripen into passion. The child in whom jealousy has been once powerfully excited, will be ever on the watch for food, to nourish its malignant principle: and occasions for its exercise will not long be wanting, since it is at once un⚫ generous and unjust, and therefore frames to

itself a source of suspicion in the very good qualities and good conduct of its compeers. This passion having taken deep root in the mind, the child suffers a marked diminution of affection for its associates, who have become the objects of jealousy; love to its parents is supplanted by a sense of injury, a doubt of their affection, a distrust in the equity of their decisions, and a carelessness of compliance with their wishes; the bond of relationship is severed; the unity of the social compact is destroyed; every evil passion is fostered; the influence of paternal government is lost; the hopes of education are blasted; the growth of the moral virtues is repressed; the influence of religion over the conduct is supplanted; the heart is occupied by a demon before whose sway reason and intellect, judgment and reflection, duty and conscience are laid prostrate and enslaved; and it has become the miserable victim of a passion which knows no bounds; under whose influence, truth and justice, prudence, reputation, gratitude, the hope of worldly success, the motives of benevolence, the love of esteem, the claims of pity, and the laws of God, all, all, are yielded to falsehood and artifice, the most cruel injustice, the imprudence of infatuation, the love of revenge, the basest ingratitude, the gratification of a blind passion, the dictates of selfishness, the luxury of malice, the whisper of hatred, the unpitying demands of that passion, which is cruel, and which in the full tide of its headlong course, is arrested by no barrier human

or divine, but seeks to confound all it knows and once loved, in one common ruin here and hereafter. There is no peace to the bosom of the jealous man; he is tormented by a fire that is not quenched, by the worm that never dieth; his bosom burns by its own combustion; and he carries about with him feelings of inexpressible agony, which none can thoroughly appreciate. For "jealously is cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame." Solomon's Song, viii. 6. "Jealousy is the rage of a man; therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance." Proverbs vi. 34. "And who is able to stand before jealousy." Proverbs xxvii. 4.

So vehement is this passion, that the integrity of the brain often suffers as its consequence, and insanity is the result; a form of maniacal hallucination not very uncommon, and which has often led to the most desperate catastrophe. Would that we could consider all these results as maniacal: the mind would indeed rest on a little sphere of hope, which would throw a gleam of sunshine over futurity, and dispel the thick gloom which awaits the closing up of the earthly career of such wretched beings. But what must that passion be, which at its height involves the sacrifice of temporal and eternal good, present character, the ties of blood, the institutions of society, the appointments of heaven, the injunctions of the Most High; and in whose train are to be seen anger, hatred, malice, revenge, insanity, murder,

suicide? What must that passion be, which degrades the man, destroys the Christian's hope, annihilates the christian temper, and consigns the individual to the gloomy precincts of a lunatic asylum here; to the still narrower, and more chilly separation of a cheerless grave, or to the darkness which may be felt of a hopeless eternity? How important is it to avoid exciting this passion in the young, to check it in embryo, to develop principle as its antidote, and to fortify the mind against its encroachments by educating christian hopes, and christian precepts, and christian consolation, and christian anticipations, as those objects alone which are to be sought, to be obeyed, to be enjoyed, to be struggled for with vehement intense desire!

SECTION VII. Of Pity.

PITY is a sympathetic affection of the heart, directed with more or less of energy towards all those who are suffering or unfortunate: it is the counterpoise of selfishness, the parent of compassion, the associate of feeling, the handmaid of charity; it is nature's appointed channel, through which the pang of suffering is to be relieved, and the cry of the destitute is to be heard, and the tear of the mourner is to be wiped away.

Pity is not the result of reason and reflection, but an instinctive love for our fellow-creatures;

a natural recoil from suffering of every kind; a desire to alleviate the sorrows, and augment the joys of our fellow-men. It is a spontaneous movement of the soul; and where reason has been sophisticated, and the memory of personal sorrows has been obliterated, and the sobriety of reflection has never existed, and habit has obscured the perception of suffering, even here pity occupies the heart, and renders man compassionate in spite of himself: the suffering of an animal, the idea of its death, the termination of its circumscribed pleasures, the manner of its dissolution, will excite that painful feeling which prompts to alleviate its distress, and to save it from destruction: how much more, then, ought the principle to be aroused by a tale of woe-and à fortiori, by the contemplation of suffering humanity; by the sight of real distress; by the cottage of indigence, undefended from the rude blast of winter; by the miserable pallet of sickness occupied by a wretched being; ignorant as wretched; rapidly hastening to the goal of life, through a lengthened series of pain, almost realizing the pang of dissolution; but with this aggravation, that to him death is not the termination of being, but the mere change which conducts the child of mortality to that world where his eternal destiny is irrevocably fixed. Sorrow, suffering, disease, pain, poverty, indigence, wretchedness, ignorance, and sin; the misery of to-day, and the uncertainty of tomorrow's hope; the sufferings of sickness, and the slow extinction of life, the blindness of the