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are to be attributed, in a great measure, to the general warmth of the climate, and to the fertility of the soil; to the face of nature perpetually blooming around them; and to the opportunity they had of contemplating the heavenly bodies, continually shining under a cloudless sky. These were soon considered as the residence of Divine intelligence, and worshipped, together with the elements, as deities.

4. The historians of antiquity were all poets. To immortalize the heroes, whose deeds they described, they elevated them to the skies, and bestowed on them the names of the celestial luminaries. The sculptor and the painter exercised all their skill to encourage this strange delusion. The use of hieroglyphics was another fertile source of error. The minutest animals and plants were worshipped as emblems of Deity. PLATT.

LESSON CIII.

Religious Hope.

The wise with hope support the pains of life.

1. The time present seldom affords sufficient employment to the mind of man. Objects of pain or pleasure, love or admiration, do not lie thick enough together in life to keep the soul in constant action, and supply an immediate exercise to its faculties. In order, therefore, to remedy this defect, that the mind may not want business, but always have materials for thinking, she is endowed with certain powers, that can recall what has passed, and anticipate what

is to come.

2. That wonderful faculty, which we call the memory, is perpetually looking back, when we have nothing present to entertain us. It is like those repositories in several animals, that are filled with stores of their former food, on which they may ruminate when their present pasture fails.

3. As the memory relieves the mind in her vacant moments, and prevents any chasms of thought by ideas of what is past, we have other faculties that agitate and em ploy her upon what is to come. These are the passions of hope and fear.

4. By these two passions we reach forward into futurity, and bring up to our present thoughts objects that lie hid in the remotest depths of time. We suffer misery and enjoy happiness before they are in being; we can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity, when the heavens and earth shall be no more.

5. By the way, who can imagine that the existence of a creature is to be circumscribed by time, whose thoughts are not! But I shall here confine myself to that particular passion which goes by the name of hope.

6. Our actual enjoyments are so few and transient, that man would be a miserable being, were he not endowed with this passion, which gives him a taste of those good things that may possibly come into his possession. "We should hope for every thing that is good," says the old poet Linus, "because there is nothing which may not be hoped for, and nothing but what the gods are able to give us.'

7. Hope quickens all the still parts of life, and keeps the mind awake in her most remiss and indolent hours. It gives habitual serenity and good humour. It is a kind of vital heat in the soul, that cheers and gladdens her, when she does not attend to it. It makes pain easy, and labour pleasant.

8. Besides these several advantages which arise from hope, there is another which is none of the least, and that is, its great efficacy in preserving us from setting too high a value on present enjoyments. The saying of Cæsar is well known. When he had given away all his estate in gratuities among his friends, one of them asked what he had left for himself, to which that great man replied, Hope.

9. His natural magnanimity hindered him from prizing what he was certainly possessed of, and turned all his thoughts upon something more valuable that he had in view. I question not but every reader will draw a moral from this story, and apply it to himself without my direction.

10. The old story of Pandora's box, (which many of the learned believe was formed among the heathens upon the tradition of the fall of man,) shows us how deplorable & state they thought the present life without hope. To set forth the utmost condition of misery they tell us, that our forefather, according to the pagan theology, had a great

vessel presented him by Pandora: upon his lifting up the lid of it, says the fable, there flew out all the calamities and distempers incident to men, from which, till that time, they had been altogether exempt. Hope, who had been inclosed in the cup with so much bad company, instead of flying off with the rest, stuck so close to the lid of it, that it was shut down upon her.

11. I shall make but two reflections upon what I have hitherto said. First, that no kind of life is so happy as that which is full of hope, especially when the hope is well grounded, and when the object of it is of an exalted kind, and in its nature proper to make the person happy who enjoys it. This proposition must be very evident to those who consider how few are the present enjoyments of the most happy man, and how insufficient to give him an entire satisfaction and acquiescence in them.

12. My next observation is this, that a religious life is that which most abounds in a well-grounded hope, and such an one as is fixed on objects that are capable of making us entirely happy. This hope in a religious man, is much more sure and certain than the hope of any temporal blessing, as it is strengthened, not only by reason, but by faith. It has at the same time its eye perpetually fixed on that state, which implies in the very notion of it the most full and the most complete happiness.

13. I have before shown how the influence of hope in general sweetens life, and makes our present condition supportable, if not pleasing; but a religious hope has still greater advantages. It does not only bear up the mind under her sufferings, but makes her rejoice in them, as they may be the instruments of procuring her the great and ultimate end of all her hope.

14. Religious hope has likewise this advantage above any other kind of hope, that it is able to revive the dying man, and to fill his mind, not only with secret comfort and refreshment, but sometimes with rapture and transport. He triumphs in his agonies, while the soul springs forward with delight to the great object which she has always had in view, and leaves the body with an expectation of being re-united to her in a glorious and joyful resurrection.

15. I shall conclude this essay with those emphatical expressions of a lively hope, which the Psalmist made use of in the midst of those dangers and adversities which sur

rounded him; for the following passage had its present and personal, as well as its future and prophetic sense.

16. "I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for ever ADDISON.

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Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher death, and God adore:
What future bliss he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest;
The soul uneasy, and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates on a life to come.

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LESSON CIV.

Mr. Pitt's Speech, Nov. 18, 1777,

In opposition to Lord Suffolk, who proposed to Parliament to employ the Indians against the Americans; and who said, in the course of the debate, that "they had a right to use all the means that God and Nature had put into their hands, to conquer America."

1. My Lords, I am astonished to hear such principles confessed! I am shocked to hear them avowed in this House, or in this country! Principles, equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and unchristian!

2. My Lords, I did not intend to have encroached again on your attention; but I cannot repress my indignation. I feel myself impelled by every duty. My lords, we are called upon as members of this house, as men, as Christian men, to protest against such notions standing near the throne, polluting the ear of Majesty. "That God and nature put into our hands!" I know not what ideas my lord may entertain of God and nature; but I know, that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity.

3. What! to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife! Such horrible notions shock every precept of religion, divine or natural, and every generous feeling of hu manity. And, my lords, they shock every sentiment of honour; they shock me as a lover of honourable war, and a detester of murderous barbarity.

4. These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon that Right Reverend Bench, those holy ministers of the gospel, and pious pastors of our Church: I conjure them to join in the holy work, and vindicate the religion of their God. I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this learned bench, to defend and support the justice of their country.

5. I call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn; upon the learned judges, to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honour of your lordships, to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution.

6. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain he led your victorious fleets against the boasted armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honour, the liberties, the religion of this country, if these practices are let loose among

us.

7. My lords, this awful subject, so important to our honour, our constitution, and to religion, demands the most solemn and effectual inquiry. And I again call upon your lordships, and the united powers of the state, to examine it thoroughly, and decisively, and to stamp upon it an indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. And I again implore those holy prelates of our religion, to do away these iniquities from among us. Let them perform a lustration; let them purify this House, and this country from this sin.

8. My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night

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