sues, Christianity requires her
votaries to live above the temptations which they hold out. She
requires it the more especially, because Christians in our time,
not being called upon to make great and trying sacrifices, of life,
of fortune, and of liberty; and having but comparatively small
occasions to evidence their sincerity, should the more cheerfully
make the petty but daily renunciation of those pleasures which are
the very element in which worldly people exist.

"We have not misled her by unfair and flattering representations of
the Christian life. We have not, with a view to allure her to
embrace it on false pretenses, taught her that when religion is
once rooted in the heart, the remainder of life is uninterrupted
peace, and unbroken delight: that all shall be perpetually smooth
hereafter, because it is smooth at present. This would be as unfair
as to show a raw recruit the splendors of a parade day, and tell
him it was actual service. We have not made her believe that the
established Christian has no troubles to expect, no vexations to
fear, no storms to encounter. We have not attempted to cheat her
into religion, by concealing its difficulties, its trials, no, nor
its unpopularity.

"We have been always aware, that to have enforced the most exalted
Christian principles, together with the necessity of a
corresponding practice, ever so often and so strongly, would have
been worse than foolish, had we been impressing these truths one
part of the day, and had on the other part, been living ourselves
in the actual enjoyment of the very things against which we were
guarding her. My dear Charles, if we would talk to young people
with effect, we must, by the habits of which we set them the
example, dispose them to listen, or our documents will be something
worse than fruitless. It is really hard upon girls to be tantalized
with religious lectures, while they are at the same time tempted to
every thing against which they are warned; while the whole bent and
bias of the family practice are diametrically opposite to the
principles inculcated.

"In our own case, I think I may venture to affirm, that the plan
has answered. We endeavored to establish a principle of right,
instead of unprofitable invective against what was wrong. Perhaps
t