tions of the world, and the corruptions of your own heart, you may be the means of spreading the contagion of vice and misery.

Let this awful consideration induce you to cling for support to the "rock " of ages." Let your opinion of your own state be determined, not by the applause of the world, not by the flattering testimony of partial friends, but by the word of God. Seek there for your real character; seek there for instruction, for consolation, and for hope. The instruction, the consolation, the hope, that corresponds not with the word of truth, reject; reject with firmness, as you value your eternal welfare!

Take a comprehensive view of the duties that are required of you, and you will find that they do not demand a resignation of the ground you occupy, nor a dereliction of any of the

external

external circumstances which give it apparent elevation. You are, on the contrary, to fulfil to the utmost the duties of the post that is assigned you and if it be one which particularly exposes you to the attacks of the enemy, you are only to exert the greater diligence to guard against surprize.

Your acquaintance, whatever your real worth may be, will at all events be courted. But remember the opposite descriptions of the persons by whom it will be sought after, according to the species of distinction you enjoy. If you place your glory in the adventitious circumstances which may be considered as purely accidental, to these circumstances you will be indebted for the incense of flattery, and the ever-pleasing offerings of respect and adulation. But from whom will you receive them?

VOL. II.

N

From

From the selfish and the vain. Front those who attach themselves to you with no other view than to add to their own importance; who, when they find it their interest to sacrifice you at a higher shrine, will not only forsake you, but expose and exaggerate your weaknesses and follies, and deride you for having been the dupe of their insincerity. You will live and die without having known the comfort of a real friend. If you, on the contrary, acquire and exercise the dispositions and virtues which can alone recommend you to the favour of Heaven, you will yourself be the real object of attraction; and all adventitious circumstances, however splendid, will be thrown in the back ground: they will be be forgotten, though not despised, by those who will then be solicitous of your favour, you will have the esteem and regard

for

gard of the estimable and the wise. You will then experience all the sympathies of friendship, all the endearments of affection. You will be looked up to in sorrow, as the consoling angel, whose smiles are effectual to cheer the drooping heart: you will be consulted in perplexity, as the oracle on whose dispassionate decision the doubtful may place confidence. Your relations will rejoice in you as their honour and their pride. Your brothers and sisters will love you as their dearest earthly good; their guide, their adviser, and their friend.

And now, my dearest love, the painful task remains of bidding you a long-perhaps a last farewell! The promise which I made of doing you all the good in my power, I have endeavoured to accomplish to the utmost. I have done it as unto God,

and

and not unto man: and if the sin. cerity of the motive finds acceptance in his sight, I shall not go without my reward. May my prayers be heard, and it will be given in the shape of a blessing upon my instructions.

With regard to the younger objects of my anxious solicitude, their tender age forbids the hope that much of what they learned from me will remain with them. Still I cannot but flatter myself, that the, dispositions to benevolence, to charity, and to gratitude, which I zealously endeavoured to inspire, may retain their influence in the heart. "I have laid the

foundation, and another buildeth "thereon. But let every man take "heed how he buildeth thereupon ; "for other foundation can no man

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lay than that is laid, which is Jesus "Christ. Now if any man build 66 upon