the secret good opinion we entertain of ourselves. It is not enough that we inveigh against ourselves, we must in a manner forget ourselves. This oblivion of self from a pure principle, would go further towards our advancement in Christian virtue, than the most splendid actions performed on the opposite ground.

That self-knowledge which teaches us humility, teaches us compassion also. The sick pity the sick. They sympathize with the disorder of which they feel the symptoms in themselves. Self-knowledge also checks injustice, by establishing the equitable principle of showing the kindness we expect to receive; it represses ambition, by convincing us how little we are entitled to superiority; it renders adversity profitable, by letting us see how much we deserve it; it makes prosperity safe, by directing our hearts to him who confers it, instead of receiving it as the consequence of our own desert.

We even carry our self-importance to the foot of the throne of God. When prostrate there we are not required it is true, to forget ourselves, but we are required to remember HIM. We have indeed much sin to lament, but we have also much mercy to adore. We have much to ask, but we have likewise much to acknowledge: Yet our infinite obligations to God do not fill our hearts half as much as a petty uneasiness of our own; nor His infinite perfections as much as our own smallest want.

The great, the only effectual antidote to self-love, is to get the love of God and of our neighbor firmly rooted in the heart. Yet let us ever bear in mind, that dependence on our fellow creatures is as carefully to be avoided as love of them is to be cultivated. There is none but God on whom the principles of love and dependence form but one duty.

CHAP. XIV.

On the conduct of Christians in their intercourse with the Irreligious.

THE Combination of integrity with discretion is the precise point at which a serious Christian must aim in his intercourse, and especially in his debates on religion, with men of the opposite description. He must consider him

self as not only having his own reputation but the honor of religion in his keeping. While he must on the one hand "set his face as a flint" against any thing that may be construed into compromise or evasion, into denying or concealing any Christian truth, or shrinking from any commanded duty, in order to conciliate favor; he must, on the other hand, be scrupulously careful never to maintain a Christian doctrine with an unchristian temper. In endeavoring to convince, he must be cautious not needlessly to irritate. He must distinguish between the honor of God and the pride of his own character, and never be pertinaciously supporting the one, under the pretence that he is only maintaining the other. The dislike thus excited against the disputant, is at once transferred to the principle, and the adversary's unfavorable opinion of religion is augmented by the faults of its champion. At the same time the intemperate champion puts it out of his power to be of any future service to the man whom his offensive manners have disgusted.

A serious Christian, it is true, feels an honest indignation at hearing those truths on which his everlasting hopes depend, lightly treated. He cannot but feel his heart rise at the affront offered to his Maker. But instead of calling down fire from heaven on the reviler's head, he will raise a secret supplication to the God of heaven in his favor, which, if it change not the heart of his opponent, will not only tranquilize his own, but soften it towards his adversary; for we cannot easily hate the man for whom we pray. He who advocates the sacred cause of Christianity, should be particularly aware of fancying that his being religious will atone for his being disagreeable; that his orthodoxy will justify his uncharitableness, or his zeal make up for his indiscretion. He must not persuade himself that he has been serving God, when he has only been

gratifying his own resentment; when he has actually by a fiery defence prejudiced the cause which he might perhaps have advanced by temperate argument, and persuasive mildness. Even a judicious silence under great provocation is, in a warm temper, real forbearance. And though "to keep silence from good words" may be pain and grief, yet the pain and grief must be borne, and the silence must be observed.

We sometimes see imprudent religionists glory in the attacks which their own indiscretion has invited. With more vanity than truth they apply the strong and ill chosen term of persecution, to the sneers and ridicule which some impropriety of manner or some inadvertency of their own has occasioned. Now and then it is to be feared the censure may be deserved, and the high professor may possibly be but an indifferent moralist. Even a good man, a point we are not sufficiently ready to concede, may have been blameable in some instance, on which his censurers will naturally have kept a keen eye. On these occasions how forcibly does the pointed caution recur, which was implied by the divine moralist on the mount, and enforced by the apostle Peter, to distinguish for whose sake we are calumniated.

By the way, this sharp look out of worldly men on the professors of religion, is not without very important uses. While it serves to promote circumspection in the real Christian; the detection to which it leads in the case of the hollow professor, forms a broad and useful line of distinction between two classes of characters so essentially distinct, and yet so frequently, so unjustly, and so malevolently confounded.

The world believes, or at least affects to believe, that the correct and elegant minded religious man is blind to those errors and infirmities, that eccentricity and bad taste, that propensity to diverge from the strait line of prudence, which is discernible in some pious but ill-judging men, and which delight and gratify the enemies of true piety, as furnishing them with so plausible a ground for censure. But if the more judicious and better informed Christian bears with these infirmities, it is not that he does not clearly perceive and entirely condemn them. But he bears with what he disapproves for the sake of the zeal, the sincerity, the general usefulness of these defective characters: these good qualities are totally overlooked by the censurer, who is ever on the watch to aggravate the

failings which christian charity laments without extenuating. It bears with them from the belief that impropriety is less mischievous than carelessness, a bad judgment than a bad heart, and some little excesses of zeal than gross immorality, or total indifference.

We are not ignorant how much truth itself offends, though unassociated with any thing that is displeasing. This furnishes an important rule not to add to the unavoidable offence, by mixing the faults of our own character with the cause we support; because we may be certain that the enemy will take care never to separate them. He will always voluntarily maintain the pernicious association in his own mind. He will never think or speak of religion without connecting with it the real or imputed bad qualities of all the religious men he knows or has heard of.

Let not then the friends of truth unnecessarily increase the number of her enemies. Let her not have at once to sustain the assaults to which her divine character inevitably subjects her, and the obloquy to which the infirmities and foibles of her injudicious, and if there are any such, her unworthy champions expose her.

But we sometimes justify our rash violence under color that our correct piety cannot endure the faults of others. The Pharisees overflowing with wickedness themselves, made the exactness of their own virtue a pretence for looking with horror on the publicans, whom our Saviour regarded with compassionate tenderness, while he reprobated with keen severity the sins and especially the censoriousness of their accusers. 66 Charity," says an admirable French writer, "is that law which Jesus Christ came down to bring into the world, to repair the divisions which sin has introduced into it; to be the proof of the reconciliation of man with God, by bringing him into obedience to the divine law; to reconcile him to himself by subjugating his passions to his reason; and in fine to reconcile him to all mankind, by curing him of the desire to domineer over them."

But we put it out of our power to become the instruments of God in promoting the spiritual good of any one, if we stop up the avenue to his heart by violence or imprudence. We not only put it of our power to do good to all whom we disgust, but are we not liable to some responsibility for the failure of all the good we might have done them, had we not forfeited our influence by our indiscretion? What we do not to others in relieving their spirit

ual as well as bodily wants, Christ will punish as not having been done to himself. This is one of the cases in which our own reputation is so inseparably connected with that of religion, that we should be tender of one for the sake of the other.

The modes of doing good in society are various. We should sharpen our discernment to discover them, and our zeal to put them in practice. If we cannot open a man's eyes to the truth of religion by our arguments, we may perhaps open them to its beauty by our moderation. Though he may dislike Christianity in itself, he may, from admiring the forbearance of the Christian, be at last led to admire the principle from which it flowed. If he have hitherto refused to listen to the written evidences of religion, the temper of her advocate may be a new evidence of so engaging a kind, that his heart may be opened by the sweetness of the one to the verities of the other. He will at least be brought to allow that that religion cannot be very bad, the fruits of which are so amiable. The conduct of the disciple may in time bring him to the feet of the master. A new combination may be formed in his mind. He may begin to see what he had supposed antipathies, reconciled, to unite two things which he thought as impossible to be brought together as the two poles, he may begin to couple candor with Christianity.

But if the mild advocate fail to convince, he may persuade; even if he fail to persuade, he will at least leave on the mind of the adversary such favorable impressions, as may induce him to inquire farther. He may be able to employ on some future occasion, to more effectual purpose, the credit which his forbearance will have obtained for him, whereas uncharitable vehemence will probably have forever shut the ears and closed the heart of his opponent against any future intercourse.

But even if the temperate pleader should not be so happy as to produce any considerable effect on the mind of his antagonist, he is in any case promoting the interests of his own soul; he is at least imitating the faith and patience of the saints; he is cultivating that "meek and quiet spirit' of which his blessed master gave at once the rule, the injunction, and the praise.

If "all bitterness, and clamor, and malice, and evil speaking" are expressly forbidden in ordinary cases, surely the prohibition must more peculiarly apply to the case of religious controversialists. Suppose Voltaire and Hume