on the esteem and affection of good men, depend upon those habits, in which the embellishments of manners are blended with the more important, more solid, and more hallowed excellences of morality. Hence, as on the one hand meekness of disposition, and abstinence from scandal, shed additional lustre upon your prudence, your cheerfulness, your chastity, and your piety, so, on the other hand, a busy, sarcastic, calumnious turn of mind, becomes in you particularly offensive and formidable-offensive, because it clashes with all our preconceived opinions of what is most fitting in you, and most amiableformidable, because it is accompanied now and then by a fertility of invention, and sprightliness of remark, and felicity of diction, which for a time conceal from the observer the lurking venom. It is a desertion of that small and flowery, yet straight and secure path, which nature has pointed out for you. It is an abandonment of the homage to which you are entitled by that good sense, that delicacy, that tender sensibility, which are deservedly considered as your indispensable duties and distinguishing ornaments. It is a deliberate and perverse assumption of the more odious and pernicious qualities which it should be your glory, not to imitate, but to restrain and soften in the hardier sex; and which in that sex-not your own-may sometimes be expiated by the sterner and more arduous virtues, not attainable by you, and therefore not required from you. Conscious indeed I am of speaking the language, not of courtesy, which is ill adapted to

the house of God, but of sincerity and seriousness, when I say that, with every well-educated and welldisposed woman, as well as every contemplative and benevolent man, in every Christian congregation, and every civilized company, a female atheist, a female libertine, and a female slanderer, cannot fail to excite an instantaneous and vehement feeling of abhorrence.

To conclude: At a future opportunity I shall resume the topics suggested to us by the text, and lay before you such additional considerations as may bring home to the bosoms and the business of men the importance of the command, given to avoid precipitate and uncharitable constructions upon human conduct. Well, indeed, does it become us to recollect the solemn and authoritative declaration of our Redeemer, that every idle word shall be brought into judgment; and whatsoever difference of opinion there may be among learned men upon the grammatical import of that which is imperfectly and obscurely translated “idle,” be assured that the warning includes every deliberate falsehood, every malicious interpretation, and every harsh report, by which our fellow-creatures are undeservedly annoyed. If, then, by the strife of tongues the harmony of families is disturbed-if the feelings of unoffending or meritorious individuals are severely wounded-if their mistakes and their failings are wantonly exaggerated-if their talents and virtues are insidiously depreciated, heinous indeed will be your guilt, and heavy will be your punishment.

But of those who now hear me I would hope better things. I would wish them to consider that they are not only discharging their own duty, but securing their own happiness, by habits of candour and kindness. To him, indeed, who looks, as becomes a wise observer and a sincere Christian to look, at the negligences and ignorances, and even the sins of his fellow-creatures, the whole moral world assumes a brighter aspect. He perceives the tendency of evil itself to produce good, when it exercises the compassion of the spectator and humbles the pride of the offender. Though in vice he must discern all its loathsome qualities, and all its destructive effects, he at the same time will be consoled by the discovery of every circumstantial extenuation, and tracing it to its cause in some virtuous principle not quite extinguished, he will endeavour to call that principle into more vigorous action, and to extricate it from the incumbrance of all the untoward inclinations and practices which have hitherto impeded its operation. Virtue he will behold in its native and unclouded lustre : he will hold it up to the veneration of mankind, and, by well-founded applause and well-timed encouragement he will give a wider extent to the influence of good example. Sweet will be his slumbers, when he reflects that for days and months and years he has soothed the afflicted, vindicated the innocent, and animated the meritorious; and at the awful hour of death, remembering the tenderness which he has shewn to the errors and failings of his fellow-creatures, he will be

able without presumption to cherish the consolatory hope, that the mercy which he has exercised towards others will be abundantly granted to his own imperfections, when he stands before the tribunal of a most righteous and omniscient Judge.

SERMON XIII.

ST. MATTHEW vii. 1.

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

IN a former Discourse, having made some preliminary and general remarks on the guilt of forming harsh judgments, I directed your attention to a series of particular circumstances, in which the evil properties and evil consequences of censoriousness were equally prominent to your good sense, and offensive to your good feelings. I explained to you how unsafe and unbecoming it was among the rich, and how dangerous to the poor-how inconsistent it is with the ingenuousness of youth and the seriousness of age-for the use of congregations differently constituted from that which I here address, I had further endeavoured to shew how base is detraction in men of vigorous and cultivated intellects, to whom learning, science, and the nobler concerns of human life, present other and more abundant sources for rational amusement or instructive investigation-and, above all, I earnestly endeavoured to shew how fatal it is to that prudence, that delicacy, and that tender sensibility, which are justly esteemed the indispensable duties and characteristic