Professions.

Authority of physician.

and act with special reference to it in all his intercourse. In this case, however, there is one great danger; especially where the subject is young. The visiter insensibly allows the object before his mind, to change from a simple desire to promote the spiritual progress of his charge, into a desire to gratify himself with the indications of this progress. His conversations gradually assume a tendency to elicit expressions of piety, rather than to promote the silent progress of piety within. The consequence is, that after a time, some action or expression on the part of the patient, betrays lurking vanity or spiritual pride, which astonishes and grieves his visiter, and he opens his eyes to the sad fact, that he has been all the time cherishing affectation and love of display. I do not mean that it has been all affectation and love of display. These feelings have insensibly and slowly mingled with, and poisoned the piety which existed at first, and it is these which the deceived visiter has been, with far different intentions, steadily developing.

As the human heart is, we cannot be too cautious in all cases and under all circumstances, how we encourage and appear to be pleased with professions of any sort. The step is so short and so easily taken, from a profession springing spontaneously and honestly out of the feeling it represents, to a profession arising from a self complacency in the credit of that feeling, that the latter comes very readily after the former. And this consideration mingles with those others which have been already adduced, to urge us to be content when we have faithfully endeavored to do the good, without being too solicitous to ascertain exactly whether the good is done.

9. We close this series of directions with one which might very properly have been placed at the commencement of it. In all our intercourse with the sick, we must acknowledge and submit to the authority of the physician and the friends, in respect to the extent to which we may

Limits and restrictions.

We

go in regard to a spiritual influence upon them ought not to violate by stealth or otherwise, the wishes of those upon whom Providence has placed the responsibility, and to whom he has given the control. I will not say that there may not be some rare exceptions, but certainly no one can doubt that where parental authority, in a case fairly within parental jurisdiction, or the orders of a physician who has the responsibility of life and death resting upon him, rise up like a wall in our way, there Providence does not intend that we shall go. Whatever good we might fancy that we could do by violating these sacred powers, we have no right to violate them. In fact we should do no good to violate them, for we should create a suspicion and jealousy which would close many more doors than we should thus unjustifiably open. It is well for the spiritual friend of the patient to have an understanding with the physician, and obtain some knowledge of the nature of the disease, especially in respect to its influence upon the mind; and then to endeavor to fall in with the plan of cure pursued, at least to do nothing to interfere with, or thwart it. We are bound to do this, even in a religious point of view, for the hope of salvation in the case of a sick sinner, lies generally more in a hope of recovery, than in any reasonable expectation of benefit from spiritual instructions given upon a dying bed. Besides, God has surrounded us in every direction, in this world, with limits and restrictions in our efforts to do good. We must keep of rselves fairly within these limits. What we cannot do without trespassing beyond them, we must be willing to leave undone. Thus, in order to accomplish our benevolent plans, we must never violate the rights of conscience or of property, or invade the just and proper liberty to which every man has an undefeasible title, or be guilty of artifice or of unworthy subterfuge, or infringe upon any sacred relations which God has established, and which he justly requires us to respect. We must go forward to our

Conclusion.

A supposition.

The infants.

We must

work, not so anxious to effect our object, as to do nothing in any degree wrong in the attempt to effect it. conform most strictly and invariably to all those principles which we are endeavoring to promote, and never transgress them ourselves, in our eagerness to extend them to others. In a word, we must be upright, pure, honest, open and incorruptible in all we do. What we cannot effect in this way, we must suppose that God does not intend that we shall effect at all,-always remembering that a pure and an unspotted example of piety, is more efficacious in promoting the spread of the gospel, than any measures, whatever, which we have to carry into effect by the sacrifice of principle.

CHAPTER IX.

CHILDREN.

"It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish."

SUPPOSE that a hundred healthy infants, each a few weeks old, were taken from the city of Constantinople, and arranged under the care of nurses, in a suite of apartments, in some public hospital. In an adjoining range of rooms, let another hundred, taken from the most virtuous families in Scotland, be placed. Take another hundred from the haunts of smugglers, or of the pirates which infest the West India Seas; another from the high nobility of the families of England, and another from the lowest and most degraded haunts of vice, in the faubourg St. Antoine, in Paris. Now, if such an infantile representation were made, of some of the most marked and most dissimilar of the classes, into which the Caucasian race has been divided, by the progress of time, and the doors of the various apart

Effect of education.

ments thrown open, the question is, whether the most minute and thorough scrutiny could distinguish between the classes, and assign each to its origin. They are to be under one common system of arrangement and attendance, —and we have supposed all the subjects to be healthy, in order to cut off grounds of distinction, which an intelligent physician might observe in hereditary tendencies to disease. Under these circumstances, if the several collections be subjected to the most thorough examination, would any ingenuity or science be able to establish a distinction between them? Probably not. There would be the same forms and the same color;-the same instincts,-the same cries. The cradles which would lull the inmates of one apartment to repose, would be equally lulling to the others, and the same bright objects, or distinct sounds, which would awaken the senses, and give the first gentle stimulus to mind, in one case, would do the same in all. Thus inspection alone of these specimens would not enable us to label them; and if they were to remain months, or even years under our care, for concealed and embryo differences to be developed, we should probably wait in vain.

But, instead of thus waiting, let us suppose that the five hundred children are dismissed, each to its mother and its home, and that they all pass through the years of childhood and youth, exposed to the various influences which surround them in the dwellings and neighborhoods to which they respectively belong;-among the bazars and mosques of the Turkish city, or the glens and hill sides of Scotland, or in the home of noise and violence, whether forecastle or hut,of the bucaniers,—or in the nurseries and drawingrooms of Grovesnor Square, or the dark crowded alleys of the Parisian faubourg. Distribute them thus to the places to which they respectively belong, and leave them there, till the lapse of time has brought them to maturity ;-then bring them all together, for examination again.

How widely will they be found to have separated now?

Education of circumstances.

Though they commenced life alike and together, their paths began at once to diverge, and now, when we compare them, how totally dissimilar. Contrast the Turk with the Scot, the hardened pirate, with the effeminate nobleman. Examine their characters thoroughly,—their feelings, their opinions, their principles of conduct, their plans of life, their pursuits, their hopes, their fears. Almost every thing is dissimilar. There is, indeed, a common humanity in all, but every thing not essential to the very nature of man is changed; and characters are formed, so totally dissimilar, that we might almost doubt the identity of the species.

There is another thing to be observed, too,-that every individual of each class, with scarcely a single exception, goes with his class, and forms a character true to the influences which have operated upon him in his own home. You will look in vain for a character of luxurious effeminacy among the pirates' sons, or for virtuous principle among children brought up in a community of thieves. You can find cases enough, of this kind, it is true, in works of fiction, but few in real life;-and those few are not real exooptions. Thoy aro accounted for, by the mixed influences, which, on account of some peculiar circumstances, bear upon some individuals, and modify the character which they might have been expected to form. The Turkish children are all Turks, unless there may be one here and there, among a million, whose course may have been deflected a little by some extraordinary circumstances in his history. So the Parisian children all become Frenchmen in their feelings and opinions, and principles of action;-the aristocratic children all become aristocratic; and all those who in London or Paris find their homes in the crowded quarters of vice, if they are brought up thieves and beggars, thieves and beggars they will live.

And yet it is not education, in the common sense of that term, which produces these effects upon human character; that is, it is not formal efforts, on the part of parents and