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and most necesary for your instruction. viour's precepts were spoken to the common people among the Jews: and were therefore given in a manner easy to be understood, and equally striking and instructive to the learned and unlearned; for the most ignorant may comprehend them, whilst the wisest must be charmed and awed, by the beautiful and majestic simplicity with which they are expressed. Of the same kind are the Ten Čommandments, delivered by God to Moses; which, as they were designed for universal laws, are worded in the most concise and simple manner, yet with a majesty which commands our utmost reverence.”

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LETTER VIII.

Dr. Gregory on Religion.

MY ESTEEMED CHILDREN,

What can be more impressive than the preceding passages from Mrs. Chapone! I now proceed to the reasoning and not less eloquent GREGORY, and hope his observations on this solemn subject will be read with merited attention.

"Religion is rather a matter of sentiment than reasoning. The important and interesting articles of faith are sufficiently plain. Fix your attention on these, and do not meddle with controversy. If you get into that, you plunge into a chaos, from which you will never be able to extricate yourselves. It spoils the temper, and, I suspect, has no good effect on the heart.

Avoid all books, and all conversation, that tend to shake your faith on those great points of religion, which should serve to regulate your conduct, and on which your hopes of future and eternal happiness depend.

Never indulge yourselves in ridicule on religious subjects; nor give countenance to it in others, by seeming diverted with what they say. This, to people of good breeding, will be a sufficient check.

I wish you to go no farther than the Scriptures for your religious opinions. Embrace those you find clearly revealed. Never perplex yourselves about such as you do not understand; but treat them with silent and becoming reverence.-I would advise you to read only such religious books as áré addressed to the heart; such as inspire pious and devout affections; such as are proper to direct you in your conduct, and not to such as tend to entangle you in the endless maze of opinions and systems.

Be punctual in the stated performance of your private devotions, morning and evening. If you have any sensibility or imagination, this will establish such an intercourse between you and the Supreme Being, as will be of infinite consequence to you in life. It will communicate an habitual cheerfulness to your tempers, give a firmness and steadiness to your virtue, and enable you to go through all the vicissitudes of human life with propriety and dignity.

I wish you to be regular in your attendance on public worship, and in receiving the communion. Allow nothing to interrupt your public or private devotions, except the performance of some active duty in life, to which they should always give place. -In your behaviour at public worship, observe an exemplary attention and gravity.

That extreme strictness which I recommend to you in these duties, will be considered by many of your acquaintance as a superstitious attachment to forms; but in the advices I give you on this and other subjects, I have an eye to the spirit and manners of the age. There is a levity and dissipation

in the present manners, a coldness and listlessness in whatever relates to religion, which cannot fail to infect you, unless you purposely cultivate in your minds a contrary bias, and make the devotional taste habitual.

Avoid all grimace and ostentation in your religious duties. They are the usual cloaks of bypocrisy ; at least they shew a weak and vain mind.

Do not make religion a subject of common conversation in mixed companies. When it is introduced, rather seem to decline it. At the same

time, never suffer any person to insult you by any foolish ribaldry on your religious opinions, but shew the same resentment you would naturally do in being offered any other personal insult. But the surest way to avoid this, is by a modest reserve on the subject, and by using no freedom with others about their religious sentiments.

Cultivate an enlarged charity for all mankind, however they may differ from you in their religious opinions. That difference may probably arise from causes in which you had no share, and from which you can derive no merit.

Shew your regard to religion, by a distinguishing respect to all its ministers, of whatever persuasion, who do not by their lives dishonour their profession; but never allow them the direction of your consciences, lest they taint you with the narrow spirit of their party.

The best effect of your religion, will be a diffusive humanity to all in distress-Set apart a certain proportion of your income as sacred to charitable purposes. But in this, as well as in the practice of every other duty, carefully avoid ostentation. Vanity is always defeating her own purposes. Fame is one of the natural rewards of virtue. Do not pursue her, and she will follow you.

Do not confine your charity to giving money. You may have many opportunities of shewing a

tender and compassionate spirit where your money is not wanted.-There is a false and unnatural refinement in sensibility, which makes some people shun the sight of every object in distress. Never indulge this, especially where your friends or acquaintances are concerned. Let the days of their misfortunes, when the world forgets or avoids them, be the season for you to exercise your humanity and friendship. The sight of human misery softens the heart, and makes it better; it checks the pride of health and prosperity, and the distress it occasions is amply compensated by the consciousness of doing your duty, and by the secret endearment which nature has annexed to all our sympathetic sorrows."

LETTER VIII.

Mrs. Hannah More on Religion.

MY ESTEEMED Children,

On this subject, in continuation, nothing can be more sensible than the following passages, from the various writings of that literary ornament of her sex, Mrs. Hannah More.

"It is of the last importance, in stamping on young minds a true impression of the genius of Christianity, to possess them with a conviction that it is the purity of the motive which not only gives worth and beauty, but which, in a Christian sense, gives life and soul to the best action: nay, that while a right intention will be acknowledged and accepted at the final judgment, even without the act, the act itself will be disowned which wanted the basis of a pure design. Thou didst well that it was in thy heart to build me a temple,' said the Almighty to that monarch whom yet he permitted not to build it. How many splendid actions will be rejected in the great day of retribution, to which statues and monuments have been raised on earth, while their

almost deified authors shall be as much confounded at their own unexpected reprobation, as at the divine acceptance of those, whose life the world counted madness.' It is worthy of remark, that 'Depart from me, I never knew you,' is not the malediction denounced on the sceptic or the scoffer, on the profligate, and the libertine, but on the high professor, on the unfruitful worker of miracles,' on the unsanctified utterer of prophecies;' for even acts of piety wanting the purifying principle, however they may dazzle men, offend God.

Though it be impossible here to enumerate all those Christian virtues which should be impressed. in the progress of a Christian education, yet in this connexion I cannot forbear mentioning one which more immediately grows out of the subject; and to remark that the principle which should be the invariable concomitant of all instruction, and especially of religious instruction, is humility. As this temper is inculcated in every page of the Gospel; as it is deducible from every precept and every action of Christ that is a sufficient intimation that it should be made to grow out of every study, that it should be grafted on every acquisition. It is the turning point, the leading principle indicative of the very genius, of the very being of Christianity. This chastising quality should, therefore, be constantly made in education to operate, as the only counteraction of that knowledge which puffeth up.' Youth should be taught that as humility is the discriminating characteristic of our religion, therefore a proud Christian, a haughty disciple of a crucified Master, furnishes perhaps a stronger opposition in terms than the whole compass of language can exhibit. They should be taught that humility being the appropriate grace of Christianity, is precisely the thing which makes Christian and Pagan virtues essentially different.

The foundation of the Christian religion, out