SECTION VIII.

On the importance of order in the distribution of our time.

1. TIME we ought to consider as a sacred trust committed to us by God; of which we are now the depositaries, and are to render an account at the last. That portion of it which he has allotted to us, is intended partly for the concerns of this world, partly for those of the next. Let each of these occupy, in the distribution of our time, that space which properly belongs to it.

2. Let not the hours of hospitality and pleasure interfere with the discharge of our necessary affairs; and let not what we call necessary affairs, encroach upon the time which is due to devotion. To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven. If we delay till to-morrow what ought to be done to-day, we overcharge the morrow with a burden which belongs not to it. We load the wheels of time, and prevent them from carrying us along a smoothly.

3. He who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows out that plan, carries on a thread which will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life. The orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of light, which darts itself through all his affairs. But, where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidents, all things lie huddled together in one chaos, which admits neither of distribution nor review. 4. The first requisite for introducing order into the management of our time, is to be impressed with a just sense of its value. Let us consider well how much depends upon it, and how fast it flies away. The bulk of men are in nothing more capricious or inconsistent, than in their appreciation of time. When they think of it, as the measure of their continuance on earth, they highly prize it, and with the greatest anxiety seek to lengthen it out.

5. But when they view it in separate parcels, they appear to hold it in contempt, and squander it with inconsiderate profusion. While they complain that life is short, they are often wishing its different periods at an end. Covetous of every other possession, of time only they are prodigal.They allow every idle man to be master of this property, and make every frivolous occupation welcome that can help them to consume it.

6. Among those who are so careless of time, it is not to

be expected that order should be observed in its distribution. But by this fatal neglect, how many materials of severe and lasting regret are they laying up in store for themselves! The time which they suffer to pass away in the midst of confusion, bitter repentance seeks afterwards in vain to recal. What was omitted to be done at its proper moment, arises to be the torment of some future season.

7. Manhood is disgraced by the consequences of neglected youth Old age, oppressed by cares that belonged to a former period, labours under a burden not its own. At the close of life, the dying man beholds with anguish that his days are finishing, when his preparation for eternity is hardly commenced. Such are the effects of a disorderly waste of time, through not attending to its value Every thing in the life of sach persons is misplaced. Nothing is performed aright, from not being performed in due season.

8. But he who is orderly in the distribution of his time, takes the proper method of escaping those manifold evils. He is justly said to redeem the time. By proper management, he prolongs it. He lives much in little space; more in a few years than others do in many He can live to God and his own soul, and at the same time attend to all the lawful interests of the present world. He looks back on the past, and provides for the future.

9. He catches and arrests the hours as they fly. They are marked down for useful purposes, and their memory remains. Whereas those hours fleet by the man of confusion like a shadow. His days and years are either blanks of which he has no remembrance, or they are filled up with so confused and irregular succession of unfinished transactions, that though he remembers he has been busy, yet he can give no account of the business which has employed him.

SECTION IX.

The dignity of virtue amidst corrupt examples.

BLAIR.

1. THE most excellent and honourable character which can adoru a man and a Christian, is acquired by resisting the torrent of vice, and adhering to the cause of God and virtue against a corrupted multitude. It will be found to hold in general, that they, who in any of the great lines of life have distinguished themselves for thinking profoundly, and acting nobly, have despised popular prejudices; and departed in several things, from the common ways of the world.

reason indeed assures us, that his attributes are infinite; but the poorness of our conceptions is such, that it cannot forbear setting bounds to every thing it contemplates, till our reason comes again to our succour and throws down all those little prejudices, which rise in us unawares, and are natural to the mind of man.

12. We shall therefore utterly extinguish this melancholy thought, of our being overlooked by our Maker, in the mul tiplicity of his works, and the infinity of those objects among which he seems to be incessantly employed, if we consider, in the first place, that he is omnipresent; and in the second,

that he is omniscient.

13. If we consider him in his omnipresence, his being passes through, actuates, and supports. the whole frame of nature. His creation, in every part of it, is full of him. There is nothing he has made, which is either so distant, so little; or so inconsiderable, that he does not essentially reside in it. His substance is within the substance of every being, whether material or immaterial, and as intimately present to it, as that being is to itself.

14. It would be an imperfection in him, were he able to move out of one place into another; or to withdraw himself from any thing that he has created, or from any part of that space which he diffused and spread abroad to infinity. In short, to speak of him in the language of the old philosopher he is a being whose centre is every where, and his circumference no where.

15. In the second place, he is omniscient as well as omnipresent. His omniscience, indeed, necessarily and naturally flows from his omnipresence. He cannot but be conscious of every motion that arises in the whole material world, which he thus essentially pervades; and of every thought that is stirring in the intellectual world, to every part of which he is thus intimately united.

16. Were the soul separated from the body, and should it with one glance of thought start beyond the bounds of the creation; should it for millions of years, continue its progress through infinite space, with the same activity, it would still find itself within the embrace of its Creator, and encompassed by the immensity of the Godhead,

17. In this consideration of the Almighty's omnipresence and omniscience, every uncomfortable thought vanishes. He cannot but regard every thing that has being, especially such of his creatures who fear they are not regarded by him. He is privy to all their thoughts, and to that anxiety of heart

in particular, which is apt to trouble them on this occasion; for, as it is impossible he should overlook any of his creatures, so we may be confident that he regards with an eye of inercy, those who endeavour to recommend themselves to his notice; and in unfeigned humility of heart, think themselves unworthy that he should be mindful of them.

ADDISON,

CHAPTER IV.

ARGUMENTATIVE PIECES.

SECTION I.

Happiness is founded in rectitude of conduct.

ALL

1. LL men pursue good, and would be happy, if they knew how not happy for minutes, and miserable for hours; but happy if possible, through every part of their existence. Either, therefore there is a good of this steady, durable kind, or there is not. If not, then all good must be transient and uncertain; and if so, an object of the lowest value, which can little deserve our attention or inquiry.

2. But if there be a better good, such a good as we are seeking; like every other thing, it must be derived from some cause; and that cause must either be external, internalgonized; in as much as, except those three there is no Now a steady durable good, cannot be desince all derived from exter

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3. By the same sex I derived from a mixture of the two; because a who is external, will proportionably destroy its essence. What then remains but the cause internal ? the very cause which we have supposed, when we place the sovereign good in mind-in rectitude of conduct.

SECTION II.

Virtue and piety man's highest interest.

HARRIS.

1. I FIND myself existing upon a little spot, surrounded every way by an immense unknown expansion.-Where am

I? What sort of a place do I inhabit? Is it exactly accommodated in every instance to my convenience? Is there no excess of cold none of heat to offend me ? Am I never annoyed by animals, either of my own, or a different kind? Is every thing subservient to me, as though I had ordered all myself? No-nothing like it-the farthest from it possible.

2. The world appears not, then, originally made for the private convenience of me alone?-It does not. But is it not possible so to accommodate it, by my own particular industry? If to accommodate man and beast, heaven and earth, if this be beyond me, it is not possible What consequence then follows; or can there be any other than this-If I seek an interest of my own detached from that of others, I seek an interest which is chimerical, and which can never have an existence.

3. How then must I determine? Have I no interest at all? If I have not, I am stationed here to no purpose. But why no interest? Can I be contented with none but one separate and detached? Is a social interest, joined with others, such an absurdity as not to be admitted? The bee, the beaver, and the tribes of herding animals, are sufficient to convince me, that the thing is somewhere at least possible. 4. How, then, am I assured that it is not equally true of man? Admit it; and what follows? If so, then honour and justice are my interest; then the whole train of moral virtues are my interest; without some portion of which, not even thieves can maintain society.

5. But, farther still-I stop not here-I pursue this social interest as far as I can trace my several relations. I pass from my own stock, my own neighbourhood, my own nation, to the whole race of mankind, as dispersed throughout the earth. Am I not related to them all, by the mutual aids of commerce, by the general intercourse of arts and letters, by that common nature of which we all participate ? 6. Again I must have food and clothing. Without a proper genial warmth, I instantly perish. Am I not related, in this view, to the very earth itself; to the distant sun, from whose beams I derive vigour? to that stupendous course and order of the infinite host of heaven, by which the times and seasons ever uniformly pass on?

7. Were this order once confounded, I could not probably survive a moment; so absolutely do I depend on this Common general welfare. What, then, have i to do, but to enlarge virtue into piety? Not only honour and justice, and