DEFAMATION. DOES humanity clothe and educate the unknown orphan?-Poverty, thou hast no genealogies:See! is he not the father of the child? Thus do we rob heroes of the best part of their glorytheir virtue. Take away the motive of the act, you take away all that is worth having in it :-wrest it to ungenerous ends, you load the virtuous man who did it with infamy :-undo it all-I beseech you, give him back his honour,-restore the jewel you have taken from him-replace him in the eye of the world It is too late. SERMON XVII. DISSATISFACTION. I PITY the men whose natural pleasures are burdens, and who fly from joy (as these splenetic and morose souls do) as if it was really an evil in itself. SERMON XXII. DISSIMULATION. Look out of your door,-take notice of that man: see what disquieting, intriguing, and shifting, he is content to go through, merely to be thought a man of plain-dealing-three grains of honesty would save him all this trouble-alas! he has them not. Behold a second, under a show of piety, hiding the impurities of a debauched life:-he is just en tering the house of God: would he were more pure-or less pious ;--but then he could not gain his point. Observe a third going on almost in the same track, with what an inflexible sanctitude of deportment he sustains himself as he advances-every line in his face writes abstinence;-every stride looks like a check upon his desires: see, I beseech you, how he is cloaked up with sermons, prayers, and sacraments; and so bemuffled with the externals of religion, that he has not a hand to spare for a worldly purpose; he has armour at least-Why does he put it on Is there no serving God without all this? Must the garb of religion be extended so wide to the danger of its rending? Yes, truly, or it will not hide the secret-and what is that?That the saint has no religion at all. But here comes GENEROSITY;-giving-not to a decayed artist-but to the arts and sciences themselves.- -See! he builds not a chamber the wall apart for the prophet; but whole schools and colleges for those who come after. Lord! how they will magnify his name! 'tis in capitals already; the first--the highest, in the gilded rent-roll of every hospital and asylum. -One honest tear shed in private over the unfortunate is worth it all. SERMON XVII. DISTRESS. NOTHING SO powerfully calls home the mind as distress the tense fibre then relaxes,- -the soul retires to itself,-sits pensive and susceptible of right impressions: if we have a friend, 'tis then we think of him; if a benefactor, at that mɔment all his kindnesses press upon our mind. SERMON XX. ELOQUENCE. GREAT is the power of eloquence; but never is it so great as when it pleads along with nature, and the culprit is a child strayed from his duty, and returned to it again with tears. SERMON XX. ENMITY. THERE is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season to give a mark of enmity and ill-will: : a word-a look, which at one time would make no impression-at another time wounds the heart; and like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which, with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object aimed at. SERMON XVI. EVILS. 1 UNWILLINGLY does the mind digest the evils prepared for it by others;-for those we prepare ourselves, we eat but the fruit which we have planted and watered-a shattered fortune,—a shattered frame, so we have but the satisfaction of shattering them ourselves, pass naturally enough into the habit, and by the ease with which they are both done, they save the spectator a world of pity but for those, like Jacob's, brought upon him by the hands from which he looked for all his comforts, the avarice of a parent, the unkindness of a relation, the ingratitude of a child, they are evils which leave a scar: besides, as they hang over the heads of all, and therefore may fall upon any !-every looker-on has an interest in the tragedy;-but then we are apt to interest ourselves no otherwise, than merely as the incidents themselves strike our passions, without carrying the lesson further:-in a word-we realize nothing-we sigh-we wipe away the tear,-and there ends the story of misery, and the moral with it. SERMON XXII. FAVOURS. IN returning favours, we act differently from what we do in conferring them: in the one case we simply consider what is best,-in the other, what is most acceptable. The reason is, that we have a right to act according to our own ideas of what will do the party most good, in the case where we bestow a favour;-but where we return one, we lose this right, and act according to his conceptions who has obliged us, and endeavour to repay in such a manner as we think it most likely to be accepted in discharge of the obligation. SERMON XIII. FELICITY. MANY are the silent pleasures of the honest peasant; who rises cheerfully to his labour :-look into his dwelling,-where the scene of every happiness chiefly lies:-he has the same domestic endearments, as much joy and comfort in his children, and as flattering hopes of their doing well, to enliven his hours and glad his heart, as you could conceive in the most affluent station.— And I make no doubt, in general, but if the true account of his joys and sufferings were to be ba lanced with those of his betters,-that the upshot would prove to be little more than this,-that the rich man had the more meat,-but the poor man the better stomach; the one had more luxury,— more able physicians to attend and set him to rights;-the other more health and soundness in his bones, and less occasion for their help; that, after these two articles betwixt them were balanced, in all other things they stood upon a level:-that the sun shines as warm,-the air blows as fresh, and the earth breathes as fragrant upon the one as the other: and that they have an equal share in all the beauties and real benefits of nature. SERMON XLIV. FELLOW-FEELING. THERE is something in our nature which engages us to take part in every accident to which man is subject, from what cause soever it may have hap |