^2 Life of The 



cunning, cheating, and beastly gratification hold 

 their empire ; — where no warning voice is ever raised 

 in behalf of honesty or piety, or against the bad 

 example set before them. As these vices are daily 

 held up before their eyes, they become practised, 

 and, in accordance with the principle laid down, by 

 the repetition, increase upon them, until they 

 swallow up every virtuous sentiment that God may 

 have implanted in their hearts, and that, watered by 

 the careful hand of innocence, might have produced 

 fruit ripening for immortality. 



If these individuals had been blessed with the 

 privilege of better associations, with the temperate, 

 the honourable, the virtuous, the same law of 

 repetition would have so strengthened them, as to 

 have enabled them to stand firm against the seduc- 

 tions that beset their early years, and that lie 

 like pit-falls all around their pathway through life. 



It is passing strange, that, with the evidences 

 daily and hourly staring us in the face, that appeals 

 to the intellect will never fix permanently a high 

 moral feeling or course of education, we should be so 

 negligent of the fact thus demonstrated, that it is 

 the brain we cultivate, and not the immaterial 

 principle, mind. When we wish to accomplish 

 either of the purposes of which I have just spoken, 

 we do what scarce any one is aware we do, viz., we 

 exercise the brain. How long would it be before 

 appeals to the intellect would convert the hardened 

 heart from its wickedness! But if the feelings of 

 kindness, of love and of sympathy, may have been 



