elings to
generosity and tenderness. They counteract the sordid or the
petty turn, which we are liable to contract from being wholly
immersed in mere worldly business, or given up to the follies of
the great world; in either case confined too much to intercourse
with barren hearts and narrow minds. It is of great use to the
'dull, sullen prisoner in the body's cage' sometimes 'to peep
out,' and be made to feel that it has aspirations for somewhat
more excellent than it has ever known; and that its own ideas can
stretch forth into a grandeur beyond what this real existence
provides for it. It is good for us to feel that the vices into
which we are beguiled are hateful to our own minds in
contemplation, and that it is our unconquerable nature to love
and adore that virtue we do not, or cannot, attain to."

The remarks on the influence of frivolity on religion, on the mistaken
name and worldly spirit introduced amongst its most solemn ordinances, are
no less excellent. After pointing out the danger of mistaking excitement
for devotion, and of separating the duties of man from the will of God,
the sanctions of religion from the lessons of morality, the writer
observes--

"The weak and ignorant are peculiarly liable to be infected with
these doctrines, and to them they are peculiarly hurtful. Unable
to take a just view of their particular duties, or of the uses
and purposes of our natural faculties, creatures of impulse,
slaves of circumstances, the pleasures of this hour fill them
with vanity, the devotion of the next with enthusiasm, or perhaps
terror. Charmed by worldly follies because they are ignorant or
idle, and without resistance to vice because they have never
learned self-command, they seek to extirpate all the natural
emotions and desires which they do not know how to regulate, and
so give up the world. But they deceive themselves; their moral
defects are not lessened; they have only changed their objects.
The frivolity which formerly made trifles absorb them, now spends
itself on religion, which it degrades. Whatever the former
defects of their character, whether selfishness, vanity, pride,
ill-temper, indolence, or any other, it remains unconquered,
though the manner in which it exhibits itself is different. In
one respect they are much worse; formerly they were less blind to
their o