to the person who can busy himself in them with discretion.

There is another kind of virtue that may find employment for those
retired hours in which we are altogether left to ourselves, and destitute
of company and conversation; I mean that intercourse and communication
which every reasonable creature ought to maintain with the great Author
of his being. The man who lives under an habitual sense of the Divine
presence, keeps up a perpetual cheerfulness of temper, and enjoys every
moment the satisfaction of thinking himself in company with his dearest
and best of friends. The time never lies heavy upon him: it is
impossible for him to be alone. His thoughts and passions are the most
busied at such hours when those of other men are the most inactive. He
no sooner steps out of the world but his heart burns with devotion,
swells with hope, and triumphs in the consciousness of that Presence
which everywhere surrounds him; or, on the contrary, pours out its fears,
its sorrows, its apprehensions, to the great Supporter of its existence.

I have here only considered the necessity of a man's being virtuous, that
he may have something to do; but if we consider further that the exercise
of virtue is not only an amusement for the time it lasts, but that its
influence extends to those parts of our existence which lie beyond the
grave, and that our whole eternity is to take its colour from those hours
which we here employ in virtue or in vice, the argument redoubles upon us
for putting in practice this method of passing away our time.

When a man has but a little stock to improve, and has opportunities of
turning it all to good account, what shall we think of him if he suffers
nineteen parts of it to lie dead, and perhaps employs even the twentieth
to his ruin or disadvantage? But, because the mind cannot be always in
its fervours, nor strained up to a pitch of virtue, it is necessary to
find out proper employments for it in its relaxations.

The next method, therefore, that I would propose to fill up our time,
should be useful and innocent diversions. I must confess I think it is
below reasonable creatures to be altogether conversant in such diversions
as are merely innocent, and have nothing else to recommend them but that
there is no hurt in them. Whether any kind of gaming has even thus much
to say for itself, I shall not determine; but I think it is very
wonderful to see persons of the best sense passing away a dozen