place; it is affirming that a man, without the slightest reason, may, if he please, believe to-day what he doubted yesterday.-Essays on the Formation of Opinions.

DCCXXXIX.

Right Use of Wealth.-Men are apt to measure national prosperity by riches; it would be right to measure it by the use that is made of them. When they promote an honest commerce among men, and are motives to industry and virtue, they are without doubt of great advantage; but where they are made (as too often happens) an instrument to luxury, they enervate and dispirit the bravest people.-Bishop Berkeley.

DCCXL.

Morality. The truths of morality, like all other truths, are discovered only by trials and experiments. The principles of moral conduct would be totally insignificant if they did not lead to some ends; and if a certain manner of exercising our faculties, a certain manner of acting, had not been found, by repeated experiments, to have made us happy, and a different manner to have made us unhappy, we should never have had any principles of morals. This science, therefore, which, under its own name, but more especially under that of religion, has been considered as a matter of mere speculation, and abounding with doubts, and uncertainties, and difficulties, is as plain and clear as geometry; it depends on facts which cannot easily be. mistaken, because the whole world is collecting and observing them; and it has this advantage over other sciences, that all men have an equal interest in the success of their inquiries.-David Williams,

DCCXLI.

The Necessarian's Creed.-Necessarians believe that the agency of moral as well as of physical causes, is regular and uniform. They believe that the changes in the intellectual world are under the government of fixed and definite laws, as much as the phenomena of physical nature. They believe that this regularity and uniformity in the operation of intellectual and moral causes, is essential to the order and harmony of that system to which we belong. Let the connexion between moral causes and their effects be dissolved, and disorder and perplexity would universally prevail. But we believe that every appetite, every passion, and every sentiment, and every feeling, has one definite and uniform agency. We believe that they are all equally, with the physical agency of nature—not partly, but wholly—not occasionally, but constantly-under the direction and control of the Great Governor of the universe. We believe that He, whose command circle thousands and thousands of surrounding worlds, fore-ordains on this diurnal sphere also whatsoever comes to pass. In him all causes centre; he is the supreme arbiter of all events. Under his government we are placed, and by the counsels of his wisdom all things are ordained. Whether the wreck of a world or the fall of a sparrow, it is the appointment of him who is the architect of the universe, and who regulates every movement of the vast machine. Weak and short-sighted mortals may fix their attention on second causes, and forget that the Omnipotent ruleth over all. In every passing event, trivial or momentous, they may perceive no other agency than the will of man; or if they acknowledge the direction and superintendence of a superior power, it is only to ascribe

to it occasional interpositions in human concerns. Chance and contingency may furnish themes of specious declamation, in relation to our limited faculties, and their existence is admitted; but we may rest assured, that under the government of an omniscient and presiding power, contingency and chance can have absolutely no place, and that every circumstance, the most minute, is ordained by unerring wisdom, combined with unchangeable goodness. Dark, indeed, and inscrutable to us are the ordinations of the supreme cause. Evils, moral and physical, cloud the present scene. Why these were either ordained, or why they are permitted to exist, it is denied to us fully to understand. But vain man would be wise. He whose habitation is but an atom in the immensity of space, who sees little, and knows still less, dares to arraign what his short-sighted reason does not approve, erecting his own limited conception into a standard of physical possibility, and dogmatising, as if his narrow intellect could span the infinitude of creation, or as if he were certain that he ranks in the highest order of possible intelligence. If it be true that we must and can reason only from what we know, it is equally true that reason teaches us that we know but little, and that little imperfectly. Dark, however, and mysterious as are the ways of Providence, let us humbly hope, that under the government of a good and wise Being, suffering will not be perpetuated, and that all evils, present and future, will ultimately issue in a state of pure, substantial, and never-ending happiness.-Crombie's Letters.

DCCXLII.

Love of Justice.-A sense of justice should be the foundation of all our social qualities. In our most early in

tercourse with the world, and even in our most youthful amusements, no unfairness should be found. That sacred rule of doing all things to others, according as we wish they would do unto us, should be engraved on our minds. For this end, we should impress ourselves with a deep sense of the original and natural equality of man.-Dr. Blair.

DCCXLIII.

Humiliating Picture.-Man may be justly entitled the great destroyer and exterminator of life, without regard to time, place, or circumstance. By his power the strongest are overcome; by his ingenuity the most subtle are circumvented, and their energies of body and mind made subservient to his necessities or pleasures. He is superior to the whole animal creation in the noblest attributes; but he enjoys one pre-eminence for which even the lowest have no cause to envy him. All the destructive animals fulfil their dire offices upon creatures belonging to other kinds: when the lion leaps from his ambush, it is in the neck of the wild ox or the antelope that he buries his claws; when the wolves howl in unison, it is the deer they are pursuing; when the scream of the eagle sounds shrill. est, then let the wild duck beware! Even the insatiably ferocious tiger keeps aloof from his brethren of blood. But, when the drums roll, and the trumpets clang-when the banner folds are shaken abroad upon the air, and the neigh of the charger re-echoes the deep notes of the bugle; then is man, with his boasted reason, preparing to spill the blood of his brother, to drive his desolating chariot over the faces of his kindred, spread havoc and despair before his path, and leave famine and pestilence to track his footsteps.-American Quarterly.

DCCXLIV.

Organization.-Every man has his own individual or ganization. This may serve to explain the difference of constitution and temperament.—Struve.

DCCXLV.

Humanity.-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 happen; but in such calamities as a man has fallen into through mere misfortune, to be charged upon no fault or indiscretion of himself, there is something then so truly interesting, that, at the first sight, we generally make them our own, not altogether from a reflection that they might have been or may be so, but oftener from a certain generosity and ten. derness of nature which disposes us to compassion, ab. stracted from all considerations of self. So that, without any observable act of the will, we suffer with the unfortunate, and feel a weight upon our spirits we know not why, on seeing the most common instances of their distress. But where the spectacle is uncommonly tragical, and complicated with many circumstances of misery, the mind is then taken captive at once, and, were it inclined to it, has no power to make resistance, but surrenders itself to all the tender emotions of pity and deep concern. So that when one considers the friendly part of our nature without looking farther, one would think it impossible for man to look upon misery without finding himself in some measure attached to the interest of him who suf fers it. I say, one would think it impossible; for, there are some tempers-how shall I describe them? formed