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call them friends. They are a kind of thermometer, by which one may know the temperature of the public feeling towards him, their assiduities with exact regularity subsiding or rising as that feeling grows cool or ardent." *

(5.) Cicero considers it an abuse of friendship, when superiors in birth, fortune, education, personal accomplishments, or any thing else, arrogate any thing to themselves in consequence of these advantages; and when those, who are conscious of their inferiority in these respects, make it a subject of murmuring and complaint, that Providence has not conferred like superior advantages on them. He says, "As superiors ought, in friendship, to use condescension, so, to enjoy this connexion, inferiors ought to elevate themselves." The same thing may be as well expressed by saying, that, in this relation, all considerations of superior and inferior ought to be entirely lost sight of.

(6.) It is still another abuse of friendship, when friends cherish expectations of perfection in each other, which human nature, by reason of its many infirmities, is entirely incapable of satisfying, and of which they do not furnish an example in themselves. They expect in their friends, perfections which they are not accustomed to exhibit in themselves in return. We must entertain moderate expectations of our friends and associates, unless we are willing to be disappointed. We must be prepared to see and tolerate, with patience, some things of which we disapprove. It is a good rule, too, to be strict with ourselves, while we grant a liberal indulgence to others, in whatever way connected with us.

4. The last duty of friendship respects its close. After using all possible precautions in the choice of our friends; after performing all the duties of this relation with faithfulness, and cautiously avoiding the abuses and violations incidental to it ;still the painful necessity must sometimes occur of dissolving our friendships. This necessity may arise from several causes. We have been mistaken, may our friend may not be such a

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man as we have taken him to be,

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there may not, after all, be that correspondence of tastes, inclinations, and wishes, which we had believed to exist, collisions of interest, of principle, or of

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Palfrey's Sermons, p. 178.

+ De Amicitiâ, c. 20.

party, may unexpectedly have caused alienation of feeling, or, lastly, our friend may have forsaken the path of honor and virtue, and after all possible attempts to reclaim him, we may have been unsuccessful. By the last of these contingencies, all friendship must inevitably be broken; and, by each of the others, its dissolution is threatened. From these very contingencies, however, certain grave duties arise.

(1.) The first of these duties is this. When alienation of feeling is threatened from any cause, or has commenced, we ought to use our best endeavours to remove the cause, and restore the confidence and good feeling which once existed. Between good men, earnest and sincere endeavours, and a reasonable share of moderation and mutual forbearance, will most generally insure this happy result. There are few misunderstandings between friends, which, in the first stages, may not be reconciled, if reconciliation is prudently attempted and earnestly desired.

(2.) But, even if all efforts of this kind have proved unsuccessful, it is still a high duty of friendship not to violate the confidence which has been mutually reposed. It is sufficiently unhappy, that the bond of a relation so intimate must be broken; the duty still remains of permitting nothing to be disclosed, which was imparted under the seal of confidence. The only exception to this, is, when a former friend has himself first broken the seal of confidence, and has so far violated this duty, as to make it a ground of assailing our conduct and character. In such a case, we must be permitted to defend ourselves; and, to this end, we may rightfully use what has been imparted to us under the confidence of a friendship, broken without our fault, and now attempted to be used to injure us.

CHAPTER IX.

THE RELATION OF BENEFACTOR AND BENEFICIARY,
AND ITS DUTIES.

THIS is a relation originating in feelings on the part of the benefactor which do honor to human nature, accompanied by actual benefits conferred in the way of personal services, pecuniary aid, or in some other way. The first duty of a benefactor, is, fully and conscientiously to meet and satisfy all the just and reasonable expectations, which his conduct towards his beneficiary may have raised.* Again, it is a duty arising from the relation thus voluntarily created by himself, to prevent, by a kind condescension, the obligation of the benefit from being oppressively felt by him on whom it has been conferred. He ought to make the sense of his favors press as lightly as possible on the mind of his beneficiary. Not only so, it is appropriate to the situation in which he has by his own act placed himself, to cherish a permanent interest in the welfare of the subject of his kindness and friendly regard.

Gratitude seems to be one of the native moral impulses of our nature; and, so ready is this emotion to spring up in every good mind, that ingratitude to a benefactor has, in every age, been considered as proof of a natural obliquity of understanding, and of unusual insensibility and perverseness of moral feeling. The first emotion of every susceptible mind, on receiving good, is, love of him from whom he receives it; the next emotion is, the wish to render him some corresponding return of service. It is the duty of the beneficiary, therefore, to study the gratification and advance, as far as may be, the interests and the happiness of him, by whom his own have been advanced without expectation of reward. The duties of the beneficiary are the more important, inasmuch as ingratitude tends so much to dry up the fountain of beneficence.

* See above, p. 204.

This relation may be abused by a benefactor in two ways, perhaps in more.

1. He may attempt to exact from his beneficiary, compliances and services which are inconsistent with good manners, good morals, the law of the land, or religion, or which are otherwise wrong or improper. By any attempt thus to avail himself of his situation to extort such compliances, he makes himself an oppressor of the most odious kind. If such was his original design in conferring benefits, he has spread a snare for the conscience and character of him who has received them, and the beneficiary is absolved from all obligation of gratitude. And, if such was not his original design, yet if, after suitable remonstrances, he still insists on exacting or expecting such compliances, the beneficiary is in like manner absolved. Nothing improper, still less immoral, can be rightfully exacted by virtue of this relation.

2. Again, the situation of a benefactor may be abused, by his ungenerously upbraiding a beneficiary with the favors which he has received. "This is odious conduct," says Cicero. He continues thus, —"It is the part of him, on whom favors are conferred, to remember them; not of him who rendered, to commemorate them.” * Such an act is inconsistent with all proper sense of character, still more with all delicacy of feeling. It tends to extinguish all the kindly feelings which are appropriate and honorable to the relation.

CHAPTER X.

THE DUTIES OF HOSPITALITY.

Too much is said in the Old and New Testament, of the duties of hospitality, to permit a writer on practical Christian morals to omit this part of his subject. In Genesis xviii. 2–8; xix. 1-3, we have, in the cases of Abraham and Lot, two very interesting and instructive examples of patriarchal hospitality, which

* De Amicitiâ, c. 20.

show, that delicate attentions and courteous treatment of guests were well understood in those primitive times.

St. Paul makes use of these attractive examples of patriarchal hospitality, to encourage Christians, and to persuade them to the observance of this duty, saying, that they who have practised it have had the honor of entertaining angels under the form of men.* One ground of the condemnation of the wicked in the day of judgment will consist in their not having received strangers with hospitality. St. Paul makes one of the qualifications of a bishop to consist in his being "given to hospitality." St. Peter enjoins, "Use hospitality one to another without grudging."§ The primitive Christians made the exercise of hospitality a special part of their duty, and were so exact in its discharge, as to excite the admiration of the surrounding heathen, by whom they were watched with a vigilant eye. They were hospitable to all strangers, more especially to those who were of the same faith. Letters of recommendation, given to believers, procured them a hospitable reception wherever the name of Christ was known.

Besides the protection, relief, and personal comfort, which hospitality affords, and which especially it was accustomed to afford in ancient times, when "violence was abroad in the earth," and the restraints of law were comparatively feeble; its fruits at all times are, the cultivation of social intercourse, mutual kindness and good feeling, the removal of unjust prejudices, &c., objects always important. Josephus understands the provision of the law of Moses, which required all the Hebrews to assemble three times a year at Jerusalem, to have been partly designed to give opportunity for the cultivation of a friendly intercourse and good feeling by personal acquaintance, festive entertainments, and other social meetings. This assembling of the great body of the nation thrice a year, in the capital city, must have furnished infinite occasions for giving and receiving hospitality.

So far as the exercise of festive and social hospitality is concerned, it is liable to two very manifest abuses, which ought to be carefully guarded against by every good man.

*

1 Tim. iii. 2.

§ 1 Peter iv. 9.

Heb. xiii. 2. + Matt. xxv. 43.
Antiquities of the Jews, Lib. IV. ch. 8, sect. 7.

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