to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?* But I check myself. It is at once folly and profanation of truth, to reason with the man who can place before his eyes a minifter of the Gospel directing the eye of the widow from the corpse of her husband upward to his and her Redeemer,(the God of the living and not of the dead)—and then the remorseless Brahmin goading on the dif confolate victim to the flames of her husband's funeral pile, abandoned by, and abandoning, the helplefs pledges of their love-and yet dare afk, which is the more humane and philosophic creed of the two?-No! No! when fuch opinions are in queftion I neither am, nor will be, nor wish to be regarded as, tolerant.

* Micah vi. 7, 8.—Ed.

Knowing the heart of man is set to be
The centre of this world, about the which
Thefe revolutions of difturbances

Still roll; where all the aspects of mifery
Predominate; whose strong effects are fuch,
As he must bear, being powerless to redress:
And that unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!

DANIEL.

HAVE thus endeavoured, with an anxiety which may perhaps have mifled me into prolixity, to detail and ground the conditions under which the communication of truth is commanded or forbidden to us as individuals, by our confcience ; and those too, under which it is permiffible by the law which controuls our conduct as members of the ftate. But is the fubject of fufficient importance to deserve so minute an examination? O that my readers would look round the world, as it now is, and make to themselves a faithful catalogue of its many miferies! From what do these proceed,

* Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland. — Ed.

and on what do they depend for their continuance? Affuredly, for the greater part, on the actions of men, and thofe again on the want of a vital principle of action. We live by faith. The effence of virtue confifts in the principle. And the reality of this, as well as its importance, is believed by all men in fact, few as there may be who bring the truth forward into the light of distinct consciousnefs. Yet all men feel, and at times acknowledge to themselves, the true cause of their misery. There is no man so base, but that at some time or other, and in fome way or other, he admits that he is not what he ought to be, though by a curious art of felf-delufion, by an effort to keep at peace with himself as long and as much as poffible, he will throw off the blame from the amenable part of his nature, his moral principle, to that which is independent of his will, namely, the degree of his intellectual faculties. Hence, for once that a man exclaims, how difhoneft I am! on what bafe and unworthy motives I act! we may hear a hundred times, what a fool I am! curfe on my folly! and the like.

*

Yet even this implies an obscure sentiment, that with clearer conceptions in the understanding, the

* I do not confider as exceptions the thousands that abuse themselves by rote with lip-penitence, or the wild ravings of fanaticifm: for thefe perfons at the very time they speak fo vehemently of the wickednefs and rottennefs of their hearts, are then commonly the warmeft in their own good opinion, covered round and comfortable in the wrap-rascal of felf-hypocrify.

principle of action would become purer in the will. Thanks to the image of our Maker not wholly obliterated from any human foul, we dare not purchase an exemption from guilt by an excufe, which would place our melioration out of our own power. Thus the very man, who will abuse himself for a fool but not for a villain, would rather, spite of the ufual profeffions to the contrary, be condemned as a rogue by other men, than be acquitted as a blockhead. But be this as it may, in and out of himself, however, he fees plainly the true cause of our common complaints. Doubtless, there feem many physical causes of distress, of disease, of poverty and of defolationtempefts, earthquakes, volcanos, wild or venomous animals, barren foils, uncertain or tyrannous climates, peftilential swamps, and death in the very air we breathe. Yet when do we hear the general wretchedness of mankind attributed to these? Even in the most awful of the Icelandic and Sicilian eruptions, when the earth has opened and sent forth vast rivers of fire, and the smoke and vapour have dimmed the light of heaven for months, how small has been the comparative injury to the human race; and how much even of this injury might be fairly attributed to combined imprudence and fuperftition! Natural calamities that do indeed. spread devaftation wide, (for inftance, the marsh fever,) are almoft without exception, voices of nature in her all-intelligible language-do this! or cease to do that! By the mere absence of one

fuperftition, and of the floth engendered by it, the plague would probably cease to exift throughout Afia and Africa. Pronounce meditatively the name + of Jenner, and afk what might we not hope, what need we deem unattainable, if all the time, the effort, the skill, which we wafte in making ourfelves miferable through vice, and vicious through mifery, were embodied and marshalled to a fyftematic war against the existing evils of nature! No, It is a wicked world! This is so generally the solution, that this very wickedness is affigned by selfish men, as their excuse for doing nothing to render it better, and for oppofing those who would make the attempt. What have not Clarkfon, Granville Sharp, Wilberforce, and the Society of the Friends, effected for the honour, and if we believe in a retributive Providence, for the continuance of the profperity, of the English nation, imperfectly as the intellectual and moral faculties of the people at large are developed at present! What may not be effected, if the recent discovery of the means of educating nations (freed, however, from the vile sophistications and mutilations of ignorant mountebanks,) shall have been applied to its full extent! Would I frame to myself the moft infpiriting representation of future blifs, which my mind is capable of comprehending, it would be embodied to me in the idea of Bell receiving, at some distant period, the appropriate reward of his earthly labours, when thousands and ten thousands of glorified spirits, whose reason and conscience