CHA P. I I.

Virtue our highest interest.

I find myself existing upon a little spot, sur

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rounded 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 kind, or a different? Is every thing subservient to me, as though I had ordered all myself? -- No -- nothing like it the farthest from it possible.--The world appears not then originally made for the private convenience of me alone?--It does not--But is it not possible so to accommodate it, by my own particular industry?--If to accommodate man and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, 'tis not possible--What consequence then follows? Or can there be any other than this--If I seek an interest which is chimerical, and can never have existence.

How then must I determine? have I no interest at all?--If I have not, I am a fool for staying here. 'Tis a smoaky house, and the sooner out of it the better.--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 enough to convince me, that the thing is, somewhere at least, possible. How then am I assured, that 'tis 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.

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 ?--Again-I must have food and clothing--Without a proE per 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 ?-Were this order once confounded, I could not probably survive a moment; so absolutely do I depend on this common general welfare.

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What then have I to do, but to enlarge Virtue into Piety? Not only honour and justice, and what I owe to man, is my interest; but gratitude also, acquiescence, resignation, adoration, and all I owe to this great polity, and its greater Governor, our common Parent.

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But if all these moral and divine habits be interest, I need not surely seek for a better. I have an interest compatible with the spot on which I live--I have an interest which may exist, without altering the plan of Providence, without mending or marring the general order of events.--I can bear whatever happens with manlike magnanimity; can be contented, and fully happy in the good which I possess ; and can

pass through this turbid, this fickle, fleeting period, without bewailings, or envyings, or murmurings, or complaints. HARRIS.

CHA P. II I.

The same subject.

ALL men pursue good; and would be happy

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if they knew how; not happy for minutes, 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 none. If none, then all good must be transient and uncertain; and if so, an object of lowest value, which can little deserve either our attention or inquiry. 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 be either external, internal, or mixed, in as much as except these three, there is no other possible. Now a steady, durable good, cannot be derived from an external cause, by reason all derived from externals must fluctuate, as they fluctuate. By the same rule, not from a mixture of the two; because the part which is external will proportionally 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 ? HARRIS.

CHA P. IV.

On the Immortality of the Soul.

AMONG other excellent arguments for the immortality of the soul, there is one drawn

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from the perpetual progress of the soul to its perfection, without a possibility of ever arriving at it; which is a hint that I do not remember to have seen opened and improved by others who have written on this subject, though it seems to me to carry a great weight with it. How can it enter into the thoughts of man that the soul, which is capable of such immense perfections, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created! Are such abilities made for no purpose? A brute arrives at a point of perfection that he can never pass; in a few years he has all the endowments he is capable of, and were he to live ten thousand more, would be the same thing he is at present. Were a human soul thus at a stand in her accomplishments, were her faculties to be full blown, and incapable of further enlargements, I could imagine it might fall away insensibly and drop at once into a state of annihilation. But can we believe a thinking being, that is in a perpetual progress of improvements, and travelling on from perfection to perfection, after having just looked abroad into the works of its Creator, and made a few discoveries of his infi-. nite goodness, wisdom and power, must perish at her first setting out, and in the very beginning of her inquiries?

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Man, considered in his present state, seems only sent into the world to propagate his kind. He provides himself with a successor, and immediately quits his post to make room for him.

He does not seem born to enjoy life, but to deliver it down to others. This is not surprising to consider in animals, which are formed for our use, and can finish their business in a short

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life. The silk-worm, after having spun her task, lays her eggs and dies. But in this life, man can never take in his full measure of knowledge; nor has he time to subdue his passions, establish his soul in virtue, and come up to the perfection of his nature, before he is hurried off the stage. Would an infinitely wise Being make such glorious creatures for so mean a purpose? Can he delight in the production of such abortive intelligencies, such short-liv'd reasonable beings? Would he give us talents that are not to be exerted? Capacities that are never to be gratified? How can we find that wisdom which shines through all his works, in the formation of man, without looking on this world as only a nursery for the next, and believing that the several generations of rational creatures, which rise up and disappear in such quick successions, are only to receive their first rudiments of existence here, and afterwards to be transplanted into a more friendly climate, where they may spread and flourish to all eternity!

There is not, in my opinion, a more pleasing and triumphant consideration in religion, than this of the perpetual progress which the soul makes towards the perfection of its nature, without ever arriving at a period in it. To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength, to consider that she is to shine for ever with new accessions of glory, and brighten to all eternity; that she will be still adding virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge; carries in it something wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of man. Nay, it must be a prospect pleasing to God himself, to see his creation for ever beautifying in his eyes, and drawing nearer to