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Religion never to be treated with Levity.

IMPRESS your minds with reverence for all that is facred. Let no wantonnefs of youthful fpirits, no compliance with the intemperate mirth of others, ever betray you into profane follies. Befides the guilt which is thereby incurred, nothing gives a more odious appearance of petulance and prefumption to youth, than the affectation of treating religion with levity. Instead of being an evidence of fuperior understanding, it discovers a pert and fhallow mind; which, vain of the firft fmatterings of knowledge, prefumes to make light of what the rest of mankind revere. At the fame time, you are not to imagine, that when exhorted to be religious, you are called upon to become more formal and folemn in your manners than others of the fame years; or to erect yourselves into fupercilious reprovers of those around you. The fpirit of true reli gion breathes gentlenefs and affability. It gives a native unaffected eafe to the behaviour. It is focial, kind, and cheerful; far removed from that gloomy and illiberal fuperftition which clouds the brow, fharpens the temper, dejects the fpirit, and teaches men to fit themfelves for another world, by neglecting the concerns of this. Let your religion, on the contrary, connect preparation for heaven with an honourable difcharge of the duties of active life. Of fuch religion discover, on every proper occafion, that you are not afhamed; but avoid making any unneceffary oftentation of it before the world..

To piety join modefty and docility, reverence of your parents, and submission to those who are your fuperiors in knowledge, in ftation, and in years. Dependence and obedience belong to youth. Modefty is one of its chief ornaments, and has ever been esteemed a prefage of rifing merit. When entering on the career of life, it is your part not to affume the reins

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as yet into your hands; but to commit yourselves to the guidance of the more experienced, and to become wife by the wisdom of thofe who have gone before you. Of all the follies incident to youth, there are none which either deform its prefent appearance, or blaft the profpect of its future profperity, more than felfconceit, prefumption, and obftinacy. By checking its natural progrefs in improvement, they fix it in long immaturity; and frequently produce mifchiefs which can never be repaired. Yet thefe are vices too com monly found among the young. Big with enterprize, and elated by hope, they refolve to truft for fuccefs to none but themselves. Full of their own abilities, they deride the admonitions which are given them by their friends, as the timorous fuggeftions of age. Too wife to learn, too impatient to deliberate, too forward to be reftrained, they plunge, with precipitant indifcretion, into the midst of the dangers with which life abounds,.

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The Balance of Happiness equal.

N extenfive contemplation of human affairs will lead us to this conclufion, that among the different conditions and ranks of men, the balance of happiness is preserved in a great measure equal; and that the high and the low, the rich and the poor, approach, in point of real enjoyment, much nearer to each other, than is commonly imagined. In the lot of man, mutual compenfations, both of pleasure and of pain, univerfally take place. Providence never intended that any ftate here should be either completely happy, or entirely miserable. If the feelings of pleasure are more numerous, and more lively, in the higher departments of life, fuch alfo are thofe of pain. If opulence increases our gratifications, it increases, in the fame proportion, our defires and demands. If the poor are confined to a more narrow circle, yet within that circle lie most of those natural fatisfactions which, after all the refinements of art, are found to be the moft genuine and true. In a ftate, therefore, where there is neither fo much to be coveted on the one hand, nor to be dreaded on the other, as at first appears, how fubmiffive ought we to be to the difpofal of Providence"! How temperate in our defires and pursuits! How much more attentive to preferve our virtue, and to improve our minds, than to gain the doubtful and equivocal advantages of worldly profperity!

When we read the hiftory of nations, what do we read but the history of the follies and crimes of men? We may dignify thofe recorded transactions, by calling them the intrigues of statesmen, and the exploits of conquerors; but they are, in truth, no other than the efforts of discontent to escape from its mifery, and the ftruggles of contending paffions among unhappy men. The hiftory of mankind has ever been a continued tragedy; the world, a great theatre, exhibiting the fame

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repeated scene, of the follies of men fhooting forth into guilt, and of their paffions fermenting, by a quick process, into misery.

But can we believe, that the nature of man came forth in this state from the hands of its gracious Creator? Did he frame this world, and store it with inhabitants, folely that it might be replenished with crimes and misfortunes? In the moral, as well as in the natural world, we may plainly difcern the figns of some violent contufion, which has fhattered the original workmanship of the Almighty. Amidft this wreck of human nature, traces ftill remain which indicate its Author. Those high powers of confcience and reason, that capacity for happiness, that ardour of enterprize, that glow of affection, which often break through the gloom of human vanity and guilt, are like the scattered. columns, the broken arches, and defaced fculptures of fome fallen temple, whofe ancient fplendour appears amidft its ruins. So confpicuous in human nature are thofe characters, both of a high origin and of a degraded state, that, by many religious fects throughout the earth, they have been feen and confeffed. A tradition feems to have pervaded almost all nations, that the human race had either, through fome offence, forfeited, or, through fome misfortune, loft, that station of primæval honour which they once poffeffed. But while, from this doctrine, ill-understood, and involved in many fabulous tales, the nations wandering in Pagan darkness could draw no confequences that were juft; while, totally ignorant of the nature of the disease, they fought in vain for the remedy; the fame divine revelation, which has informed us in what manner our apoftacy arofe, from the abufe of our rational powers, has inftructed us alfo how we may be restored to virtue and to happiness.

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Alcander and Septimius.

ATHENS, long after the decline of the Roman

empire, ftill continued the feat of learning, politenefs, and wisdom. Theodoric, the Oftrogoth, repaired the fchools which barbarity was fuffering to fall into decay, and continued thofe penfions to men of learning, which avaricious governors had monopolized.

In this city, and about this period, Alcander and Septimius were fellow-ftudents together. The one, the most subtle reafoner of all the Lyceum; the other, the most eloquent fpeaker in the academic grove. Mutual admiration foon begot a friendship. Their fortunes were nearly equal, and they were natives of the two most celebrated cities in the world; for ALcander was of Athens, Septimius came from Rome.

In this ftate of harmony they lived for fome time together, when Alcander, after paffing the first part of youth in the indolence of philofophy, thought at length of entering into the bufy world; and as a ftep pre

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