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those, who hear, and applaud, what you say, may yet, and often do, despise you for saying it; that they will ever afterwards regard you with suspicion, shun you as dangerous to their safety, and characterize you as nuisances to society. In this manner, before you are aware, your characters will become odious, and your reputation be lost.

When you repeat any thing, strive to repeat it exactly. Neither enhance, nor lessen. Colour nothing beyond the strict truth. Recite that, and that only, which you believe; and express no more confidence in what you recite, than you really feel. Recite, also, so much of the circumstances, drift, and tendency, of the transaction, which is your subject, as fairly to explain its true nature, and the real character, and conduct of those who were concerned.

Refrain from speaking when you are in a passion. All passionate words are dangerous and sinful. The wisest, and most guarded, persons, when provoked, utter, at times, things which they regret ever afterwards. Moses, the meekest of all men, when provoked at Meribah, spoke unadvisedly with his lips; and was forbidden to enter the Land of Promise.

Guard, especially, against making promises in a passion. Such promises will often involve you in serious difficulties; and prove snares and traps to your feet. You will feel a strong reluctance to fulfil, and powerful temptations to break, them: temptations, which frequently overcome vigorous resolutions, subvert established reputation, and lead their miserable victims fatally astray.

Many persons, and youths more than almost any others, are prone to make rash and inconsiderate promises. Few propensities are more unhappy than this; or conduct men to more bitter consequences. Universally resolve to make no promise, when it can fairly be avoided. When it cannot, guard it with such conditions as shall render it certainly safe. Consider, particularly, whether you possess the means of a faithful performance: if not, make no promises. In this manner you will escape the most dangerous temptations to falsehood, and the most alarming exposures to shame and ruin.

2. Fix in your minds the most solemn resolutions to speak Truth only.

Call to mind, daily, the immense advantages of Truth, and the immense evils of Falsehood. These advantages resolve to acquire these evils determine not to suffer. Both, to a considerable extent, have been set before you. Ponder them deeply, and daily, as their importance deserves. Determine that no person shall ever have it in his power to charge you with falsehood. Determine never to say any thing, which shall enable your enemies to triumph, or force your friends to blush; to say nothing, which you would be ashamed to have recorded of you; nothing, which shall forbid you to look an honest man in the face; nothing, which in the pres

ence of such a man shall force your eyes, when they meet his, to labour, linger, and fall.

Resolve firmly never to flatter any man. Speak that, which is good, of others, when you can; and when you cannot, speak, at least in ordinary cases, nothing. Remember, that a flattering mouth worketh ruin for him who flatters, as well as for him who is flattered. Be able, therefore, with Elihu nobly to say, Let me not, I pray you, accept any man's person; neither let me give flattering titles unto man. For I know not to give flattering titles: in so doing my Maker would soon take me away. To strengthen your resolutions, remember alway, that, when you are once embarked in deceit, you are wholly afloat; will be driven you know not whither without either compass or pilot; and will be environed by rocks and shoals, threatening you unceasingly with irremediable destruction.

3. Frequent the Company of Wise and Good men only.

In this society you will find temptations, not spread before you, but taken away; examples, which will not corrupt, but strengthen you in virtue. Here you will always find honour, peace, and profit, instead of shame, anxiety, and ruin. If you will seek this society, and this only; you will be welcomed to their esteem, and good offices; and will gain from their precepts and example, wisdom, truth, noble sentiments, and the most excellent conduct. These they will enforce by ten thousand motives, unthought of by licentious men, instinctively rising up to view, presented in strong lights, and exhibited with powerful persuasion. The excellency, usefulness, and glory, of virtue they will unfold to you in many ways, of which loose men never entertain a thought, and of which you yourselves have probably not formed a conception. This divine object, also, they will commend to your adoption by the charms of an amiable, honourable, and delightful Example. Their sentiments you will imbibe, even before you are aware. Their exalted spirit you will catch. Their dignified life you will make your own.

Here, you will soon learn to wonder, to be astonished, that yourselves, that any being who possesses a rational mind, could ever frequent, or ever think for a moment of frequenting, the haunts of licentious men; the scenes of profaneness, gaming, fraud, and falsehood; where darkness spreads her funeral pall; where oaths and obscenity, lies and blasphemies, furnish a dreadful prelude to a more enormous perpetration of the same foul sins in the world of perdition. To exchange the society which I have recommended for these haunts, would, in your own view, be to quit the splendours of a palace for the loathsome horrors of a jail; to wander from the sweets of Eden into the gloom, the chains, and the madness, of a dungeon.

4. To strengthen yourselves in all the conduct, which I have recommended, labour to fix in your minds a strong, solemn, and habitual, sense of the amazing importance of speaking truth alway.

Truth is the foundation of all virtue, and of all permanent happiness. Establish this great doctrine in your minds so, that it shall never be forgotten; so, that it shall be a part of your whole train of thinking, and inwoven, as an habitual, commanding principle, in all your conduct. Bring it home to your hearts; and spurn at the thought of regarding it even with a momentary indifference.

Remember, that Confidence is the foundation of all good; that unless you can confide in others, you cannot live a single day with comfort, or even with safety; that you can confide no farther than others speak truth, and fulfil promises; and that universal distrust would, to yourselves and others, be universal misery; would unhinge every expectation, and every hope; would annihilate all the business of intelligent beings; would set them at variance with each other, and with God; and would make the Universe a soli• tude and a desert.

Remember, that every human concern is decided by testimony; that he, who weakens it, is an enemy to mankind, and makes havoc of human happiness. Realize, that, if by influence, or example, you destroy, or diminish, the confidence of men; if you lessen the sense of the obligations to veracity; you will become pests of the Universe, and foes of every intelligent being, which it contains.

Call to mind, that by falsehood you will debase yourselves beyond measure; cut off all your hopes of becoming virtuous; arm your consciences against your peace; and make yourselves objects of contempt, indignation, and abhorrence.

Recollect daily, that the first step, which you take in falsehood, is the commencement of this boundless evil; that the way to become an abandoned liar is to conceal truth; to equivocate; to evade; to utter sportive falsehood; to rehearse marvellous stories; to recite the tales of private history; and to colour what you recite with hues, and stains, mixed by yourselves. In all these things you may feel at your ease; may profess yourselves to be, and may often actually be, in sport. So is the madman, who scatters firebrands, arrows, and death.

Remember, last of all, that the time, in which your lot is cast, is pre-eminently a time, in which the sense of truth is weakened, and the consciousness of moral obligation to a wonderful degree forgotten. In this day, falsehood has come forth to the public eye with her brazen front unveiled; her cheek without even a tinge; and her snaky tongue newly dipt in poison. Her professed enemies are changed into friends; her friends into worshippers. The whole world wonders after her. Afraid, no longer, of the contempt of society, or the brand of public justice, she enters familiarly into the study of the philosopher, the hall of deliberation, and the palace of power; and dictates instructions, laws, edicts, and manifestoes, to nations. In her train, parties, princes, and nations, are

proud to be enrolled. How immense, then, how unceasing, how universal, is the danger to you. Awake to that danger, and feel, that you are struggling for your all.

Above all things, commit yourselves to God in prayer. Ask him; and he will make you watchful, wise, and steadfast in your duty. Ask him; and he will teach you to love, and enable you to speak, truth only; until you arrive at that glorious world, where truth only is spoken by its happy inhabitants, and where all its blessings are realized with increasing delight, throughout ages which know no end.

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SERMON CXXVIII.

NINTH COMMANDMENT.-SLANDER.

EXODUS XX. 16.-Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

IN the last discourse, but one, I proposed to consider Falsehood under the two Heads of

Lying; and,

Slander.

The former of these I have discussed at length. I shall now proceed to the consideration of the latter; and shall arrange my Observations under the following heads.

I. The Nature of Slander;

II. The Modes in which it is practised;
III. The Evils of it; and,

IV. Dissuasives from it.

1. Slander may be thus defined. It is that Conduct, which injuriously lessens, or destroys, another's Reputation.

In most cases, Words are made the vehicle of Slander. It may, however, be accomplished without words. When we are reasonably expected to give a fair character of another, we may easily, and deeply, slander him by our Silence. We may also accomplish the same purpose by our Actions: as when we withhold our countenance from a man, who, in ordinary circumstances, might fairly expect to enjoy it; withdraw from him business, with which he has heretofore been entrusted; or turn him out of our service without alleging any reasons for our conduct. In these and the like cases, we give such proofs of suspecting him, ourselves, as to entail upon him, in greater or less degrees, the suspi

cion of others.

Slander is perpetrated sometimes with design, and sometimes through inattention. In the former case, it is perpetrated with an intention to destroy happiness; in the latter from indifference to it. In the former case it springs from malice; in the latter, from that sordid insensibility to the interests of others, which is little less censurable. It will be unnecessary to distinguish them any farther.

II. Slander is most frequently practised in the following Modes. 1. In direct and false Aspersions.

The Slanderer commences this malignant employment by inventing, and fabricating, tales of falsehood concerning the person, whe is either the object of his hatred, or the subject of his diversion.

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