condemned; not endeavouring after any excellence, nor reforming any vicious practice or irregular desire. They have no care of futurity, neither is God in all their thoughts; they direct none of their actions to his glory; they do nothing with the hope of pleasing; they avoid nothing for the fear of offending him. Those men want not much of being religious; they have nothing more than casual views to reform; and, from being peaceable and temperate heathens, might, if they would once awaken to their eternal interest, become pious and exemplary Christians. But let them not be deceived; they cannot suppose that God will accept him who never wished to be accepted by him, or made his will the rule of action.

Others there are, who, without attending to the written revelation of God's will, form to themselves a scheme of conduct in which vice is mingled with virtue, and who cover from themselves, and hope to cover from God, the indulgence of some criminal desire or the continuance of some vicious habit, by a few splendid instances of public spirit, or some few effusions of occasional bounty: but to these men it may, with emphatical propriety, be urged, that "God is not mocked;" he will not be worshiped nor obeyed but according to his own laws.

The mode of self-deception which prevails most in the world, and by which the greatest number of souls is at last betrayed to destruction, is the art which we are all too apt to practise, of putting far from us the evil day, of setting the hour

of death, and the day of account, at a great distance.

That death is certain, every one knows; nor is it less known, that life is destroyed, at all ages, by a thousand causes; that the strong and the vigorous are liable to diseases, and that caution and temperance afford no security against the final stroke. Yet, as the thought of dissolution is dreadful, we do not willingly admit it; the desire of life is connected with animation; every living being shrinks from his destruction: to wish, and to hope, are never far asunder; as we wish for long life, we hope that our wishes will be granted; and what we hope, we either believe, or do not examine. So tenaciously does our credulity lay hold of life, that it is rare to find any man so old as not to expect an addition to his years; or so far wasted and enfeebled with disease as not to flatter himself with hopes of recovery.

To those who procrastinate amendment in hopes of better opportunities in future time, it is too often vainly urged by the preacher, and vainly suggested by a thousand examples, that the hour of death is uncertain. This, which ought to be the cause of their terror, is the ground of their hope; that, as death is uncertain, it may be distant. This uncertainty is, in effect, the great support of the whole system of life. The man who died yesterday had purchased an estate, to which he intended some time to retire; or built a house, which he was hereafter to inhabit; and planted gardens and groves, that, in a certain number of years, were to supply delicacies to his

feasts, and shades to his meditations. He is snatched away, and has left his designs and his labours to others.

As men please themselves with felicities to be enjoyed in the days of leisure and retreat; so, among these felicities, it is not uncommon to design a reformation of life, and a course of piety. Among the more enlightened and judicious part of mankind, there are many who live in a continual disapprobation of their own conduct, who know, that they do every day what they ought to leave undone, and every day leave undone what they ought to do; and who therefore consider themselves as living under the divine displeasure, in a state in which it would be very dangerous to die. Such men answer the reproaches of conscience with sincerity and intention of performance, but which they consider as debts to be discharged at some remote time. They neither sin with stupid negligence, nor with impious defiance of the divine laws; they fear the punishments denounced against sin, but pacify their anxiety with possibilities of repentance, and with a plan of life to be led according to the strict precepts of religion, and to be closed at last by a death softened by holy consolations.

Projects

of future piety are perhaps not less common than of future pleasure, and are, as there is reason to fear, not less commonly interrupted; with this dreadful difference, that he who misses his intended pleasure, escapes a disappointment; but he who is cut off before the season of repentance, is exposed to the vengeance of an angry God.

JOHNSON.

REFLECTIONS

ON EVENING AND ON AUTUMN.

THERE is an eventide in the day,-an hour when the sun retires, and the shadows fall, and when nature assumes the appearance of soberness and silence. It is an hour from which every where the thoughtless fly, as peopled only in their imagination with images of gloom;-it is the hour, on the other hand, which, in every age, the wise have loved, as bringing with it sentiments and affections more valuable than all the splendours of the day.

Its first impression is to still all the turbulence of thought or passion which the day may have brought forth. We follow, with our eye, the descending sun,-we listen to the decaying sounds of labour and of toil,—and, when all the fields are silent around us, we feel a kindred stillness to breathe upon our souls, and to calm them from the agitations of society. From this first impression, there is a second which naturally follows it;-in the day we are with living men,-in the evening we begin to live with nature,- -we see the world withdrawn from us, -the shades of night darken over the habitations of men, and we feel ourselves alone. It is an hour fitted, as it would seem, by Him who made us, to still, but with gentle hand, the throb of every unruly passion, and the ardour of every impure desire; and, while it veils for a time the world that misleads us, to awaken in our hearts those legitimate

affections which the heat of the day may have dissolved. There is yet a farther scene it presents to us:-While the world withdraws from us, and while the shades of the evening darken upon our dwellings, the splendours of the firmament come forward to our view. In the moments when earth is overshadowed, Heaven opens to our eyes the radiance of a sublimer being; our hearts follow the successive splendours of the scene; and while we forget, for a time, the obscurity of earthly concerns, we feel that there are "yet greater things than these," and that we "have a Father who dwelleth in the heavens, and who yet deigneth to consider the things that are upon earth."

Such is the train of thought which the eventide of the day is fitted to excite ;-thoughts serious, doubtless, but inviting; which lead us daily, as it were, to the noblest conceptions of our being; and which seem destined to return us to the world with understandings elevated, and with hearts made better.

There is, in the second place, an "eventide" of the year, a season, as we now witness, when the sun withdraws his propitious light,-when the winds arise, and the leaves fall, and nature around us seems to sink into decay. It is said, in general, to be the season of melancholy; and if, by this word, be meant that it is the time of solemn and serious thought, it is undoubtedly the season of melancholy; yet, it is a melancholy so soothing, so gentle in its approach, and so prophetic in its influence, that they who have known it feel, as instinctively, that it is the