OCTOB-EFx, 517 



safety. As a safeguard against all evils of this ten- 

 dency, an habitual attention to the duties of reli- 

 gion will have more efficacy than all the philoso- 

 phic morality which so much abounds upon the 

 tongues of many : by religion, I mean that of the 

 national church, the most excellent that has been 

 any where established for the instruction of the hu- 

 man species. He can have no true friend that will 

 not advise him to keep the Sabbath piously and 

 strictly himself, and make his family do the same : 

 many a judge has traced the origin of crimes that 

 have brought labourers to the gallou <, to Sabbath- 

 breaking ; and if the source of failures among 

 farmers were as well explored, they would be traced 

 to the same spring. Serve God on Sunday as you 

 serve yourself on Monday: if you are a pagan, a 

 deist, a moral philosopher, you are, to a certain de- 

 gree, in reason, answerable for the paganism, deism, 

 or moral philosophy of your children and servants; 

 if a Christian, you are surely the same for their 

 Christianity : you may gain by this, but cannot 

 lose. 



The fashionable sheep- shearings, farming clubs, 

 societies, &c. render another remark not absolutely 

 unnecessary : a steady, careful old farmer, may not 

 be the worse for mixing a good deal in company of 

 a much higher rank than his own; but a young 

 man with a small degree of animation, may suffer 

 by it. His eye and mind become insensibly accus- 

 tomed to objects and habits of living to which he 

 was before a stranger; to steer clear of all imita- 



L 1 3 tion 



