excessive; the supply even of the common necessaries of existence, scanty and irregular. How can all this be without his perishing? He is led to adopt that regimen and exercise, together perhaps with that course of medicine, which strengthen his debilitated frame: gradually he is inured to fatigue and toil, and gradually he becomes capable of sustaining an astonishing degree of both. In order to ensure his success, the utmost patience, gentleness, caution and foresight, are necessary. But his temper is irritable, and his mind bold, impetuous and rash. Experience teaches him the folly of indulging this morbid sensibility; it occasions him bitter mortification; his impetuosity hurries him into errors which bring with them a long train of calamities; his boldness disappoints his cherished hopes; his rashness snatches from him some favourite object at the very moment when success is placing it in his hand. The school of life teaches him to act better the part of life; present failure prepares him for future success ; he learns that if he would escape perpetual vexation and lasting misery, he must check the first risings of passion, reflect before he acts, and act with caution.

Suppose the disposition of another is so mild as almost to degenerate into weakness; his caution is in danger of inducing irresolution;

and he is in the habit of considering and re-considering every circumstance so minutely and so often, that he nearly loses the season of action. He is wealthy, attached to wealth, and full of the timidity which is so often the companion of riches. Yet this is the man who is to take a leading part in some great event which requires promptitude, decision, uncommon effort, unconquerable perseverance, the certain sacrifice of a great portion of wealth, perhaps the loss of all. He is not forced along an unwilling agent; he is not surprised out of the caution of his character; he does not give up his wealth with reluctance and murmuring. He is led to view the event in which he is destined to take so great a share, as so important, that even he ceases to doubt of the propriety and necessity of endeavoring to effect it, and as so valuable that he deems it worth the sacrifice he is called upon to make the path marked out for him is so vividly displayed before his eyes, that he cannot but see it: he thinks it is the path of duty; he knows it is that of honor; he believes it will be that of happiness. His agency in this event, therefore, is now so far from being against his volition, that restraint would be placed upon that volition were he not the agent in it that he is. This then is the way in which the Deity influences his creatures. In order to secure his

purposes, he does not cause them to act against their volition; but he so impresses their understandings and their hearts, as to make them feel that their happiness depends on the performance of the work he assigns them.

Nor is it any objection to this view of the manner in which the Divine administration is carried on, that it implies a constant influence of the Deity over the human mind. There is no reasonable being who does not exercise some influence of this kind over the minds of others. What a powerful influence does the parent exert over the child, the master over the servant, brother over brother, and friend over friend! How can I measure the degree, how can I estimate the value of the influence which that revered instructor exercised over my mind, who first imbued it with the principles of wisdom and rectitude? What do I not owe to that dear companion of my youth, on whose early intercourse with me memory still. delights to dwell; who was my superior in age, in attainment, in wisdom, in virtue; who taught me so much while seeming to learn, and governed me so entirely without meaning to control! How many of the sensations which cheer my heart at this hour are the result of an influence which commenced at that distant period! How much of my present character is wholly dependent on

that influence! It was he who corrected that disposition, the seed of which had long lain dormant in my heart; which then was springing up rapidly, and which, had it been suffered to fix its root deeply there, would have made me a totally different being. It was he who first led me into that train of thought which directed the future pursuits of my mind, placed me in the station of life I occupy, formed the connexions which bind me by the strongest and the sweetest ties to my fellow-beings; made me what I am, and determined what I am to be. It was my friend who influenced me: it was a higher Being, a wiser and better friend, the unerring and unchanging friend of both, who influenced him.

May not these considerations suffice to give us a clear and just conception of the kind of influence which the Deity exercises over us, and by which he works his purposes in us and by us? It differs from that of our wisest and best friend only in being as much wiser and better, as wisdom and goodness in absolute perfection are different from the faint and transient indications of these attributes which are found in mortals.

The only objection of importance which can be urged against this view of the Divine government, is, that it seems to lessen accountability, and to destroy the distinction between virtue and

vice. Let us not be deceived by the sound of words. When we say that man is accountable, what do we mean? We can only mean that he will be punished for doing what he knows is wrong, and rewarded for performing what he is conscious is right. It is that rectitude of will which leads him to discharge his duty, which constitutes him virtuous: it is that perversion of mind which induces him to violate it, which renders him vicious. When his volition is good, and he obeys it, we say that he is an object of approbation, and worthy of reward: when his volition is evil, and he yields to it, we say that he is an object of disapprobation, and worthy of punishment. It is the nature of his volition which determines our notion respecting his worth or his demerit. We neither do nor ought to regard the cause of his volition. It is the evil of his will of which we disapprove, and to which it is necessary to apply the discipline of cor

rection.

You demand why, since my volition is independent of myself, and excited by circumstances over which I have no control, am I accountable for its nature, or liable to punishment if it be evil? The reply is obvious. This objection is founded on the implied presumption that volition is induced at the pleasure of the mind, and that it is the exertion of this power in exciting an