VIT.] WELAXCHOLY HOURS. S57 



neiglibours, is comparatively happy. But the number 

 of these, it is to be feared, is very small. Were all men 

 equally enlightened by the illuminations of truth, as em- 

 anating from the Spirit of Jehovah himself, they ^vould 

 all concur in the pursuit of virtuous ends by virtuous 

 means — as there ■would be no vice, there would be very 

 little infelicity. Every pain would be met with fortitude, 

 every affliction with resignation. We should then all 

 look back to the past with complacency, and to the future 

 with hope. Even this unstable state of being would have 

 many exquisite enjoyments — the principal of which would 

 be the anticipation of that approaching state of beatitude 

 to which we might then look with confidence, through 

 the medium of that atonement of which we should be 

 partakers, and our acceptance, by virtue of which, would 

 be sealed by that purity of mind of which human nature 

 is, of itself, incapable. But it is from the mistakes and 

 miscalculations of mankind to which their fallen natures 

 are continually j)rone, that arises that flood of m.isery 

 which overwhelms the whole race, and resounds wherever 

 the footsteps of man have penetrated. It is the lamen- 

 table error of placing happiness in vicious indulgences, 

 or thinking to pursue it by vicious means. It is the 

 blind folly of sacrificing the welfare of the future to the 

 opportunity of immediate guilty gratification which de- 

 stroys the harmony of society, and poisons the peace not 

 only of the immediate procreators of the errors, not only 

 of the identical actors of the vices themselves, but of all 

 those of their fellows who fall within the reach of their 

 influence and example, or who are in any wise connected 

 with them by the ties of blood. 



I would therefore exhort you earnestly — you who are 

 yet unskilled in the ways of the world — to beware on 

 what object you concentre your hopes. Pleasures may 

 allure, pride or ambition ma,y stimulate, but their fruits 

 are hollow and deceitful, and they afford no sure, no 

 solid satisfaction. You are placed on the earth in a state 

 of probation ; your continuance here will be, at the 

 longest, a very short period ; and when you are called 

 from hence you plunge into an eternity, the completion 



