glory, saying 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory.'

They glorify Him relatively to themselves-' I will magnify Thee, O Lord my strength-My help cometh of God-The Lord himself is the portion of my inheritance.' At another time soaring with a noble disinterestedness, and quite losing sight of self and all created glories, they adore him for his own incommunicable excellences. 'Be Thou exalted, O God, in thine own strength.'- Oh the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.' Then bursting to a rapture of adoration, and burning with a more intense flame, they cluster his attributes-To the King eternal, immortal, invisible, be honour and glory for ever and ever.' One is lost in admiration of his wisdom-his ascription is 'to the only wise God.' Another in triumphant strains overflows with transport at the consideration of the attribute on which we have been descanting: 'O Lord, who is like unto Thee, there is none holy as the Lord.''Sing praises unto the Lord, oh ye saints of his, and give thanks unto him for a remembrance of his holiness.'

The prophets and apostles were not deterred from pouring out the overflowings of their fervent spirits, they were not restrained from celebrating the perfections of their Creator, through the cold-hearted fear of being reckoned enthusiasts. The saints of old were not prevented from breathing out their rapturous hosannahs to the King of saints, through the coward dread of being branded as fanatical. The conceptions of their minds dilating with the view of the glorious constellation of the Divine attributes; and the affections of their hearts warming with the thought, that those attributes were all concentrated

in mercy-they display a sublime oblivion of themselves-they forget every thing but God. Their own wants dwindled to a point. Their own concerns, nay the universe itself, shrink into nothing. They seem absorbed in the effulgence of Deity, lost in the radiant beams of infinite glory.

CHAP. XI.

ON THE COMPARATIVELY SMALL FAULTS AND VIR

TUES.

THE 'Fishers of Men,' as if exclusively bent on catching the greater sinners, often make the interstices of the moral net so wide, that it cannot retain those of more ordinary size, which every where abound. Their draught might be more abundant, were not the meshes so large that the smaller sort, aided by their own lubricity, escape the toils and slip through. Happy to find themselves not bulky enough to be entangled, they plunge back again into their native element, enjoy their escape, and hope they may safely wait to grow bigger before they are in danger of being caught.

It is of more importance than we are aware, or are willing to allow, that we take care diligently to practise the smaller virtues, avoid scrupulously the lesser sins, and bear patiently inferior trials; for the sin of habitually yielding, or the grace of habitually resisting in comparatively small points, tends in no inconsiderable degree to produce that vigour or that debility of mind on which hangs victory or defeat.

Conscience is moral sensation. It is the hasty perception of good and evil, the peremptory decision of the mind to adopt the one or avoid the other. Providence has furnished the body with senses, and the soul with conscience, as a tact by which to shrink from the approach of danger; as a prompt feeling to supply the deductions of reasoning; as a spontaneous impulse to precede a train of reflections for which the suddenness and surprise of the attack allow no time. An enlightened conscience if kept tenderly alive by a continual attention to its admonitions, would especially preserve us from those smaller sins, and stimulate us to those lesser duties which we are falsely apt to think are too insignificant to be brought to the bar of religion, too trivial to be weighed by the standard of Scripture.

By cherishing this quick feeling of rectitude, light and sudden as the flash from heaven, and which is in fact the motion of the spirit, we intuitively reject what is wrong before we have time to examine why it is wrong, and seize on what is right before we have time to examine why it is right. Should we not then be careful how we extinguish this sacred spark? Will any thing be more likely to extinguish it than to neglect its hourly momentos to perform the smaller duties, and to avoid the lesser faults, which, as they in a good measure make up the sum of human life, will naturally fix and determine our character, that creature of habits? Will not our neglect or observance of it, incline or indispose us for those more important duties of which these smaller ones are connecting links?

The vices derive their existence from wildness, confusion, disorganization. The discord of the passions is owing to their having different views, con

flicting aims, and opposite ends. The rebellious vices have no common head; each is all to itself. They promote their own operations by disturbing those of others, but in disturbing they do not destroy them. Though they are all of one family, they live on no friendly terms. Profligacy hates covetousness as much as if it were a virtue. The life of every sin is a life of conflict, which occasions the torment, but not the death of its opposite. Like the fabled brood of the serpent, the passions spring up, armed against each other, but they fail to complete the resemblance for they do not effect their mutual destruction.

But without union the christian graces could not be perfected, and the smaller virtues are the threads and filaments which gently but firmly tie them together. There is an attractive power in goodness which draws each part to the other. This concord of the virtues is derived from their having one common centre in which all meet. In vice there is a strong repulsion. Though bad men seek each other, they do not love each other. Each seeks the other in order to promote his own purposes, while he hates him by whom his purposes are promoted.

The lesser qualities of the human character are like the lower people in a country; they are numerically, if not individually important. If well regulated they become valuable from that very circumstance of numbers, which, under a negligent administration, renders them formidable. The peace of the individual mind and of the nation, is materially affected by the discipline in which these inferior orders are maintained. Laxity and neglect in both cases are subversive of all good government.

But if we may be allowed to glance from earth to heaven, perhaps the beauty of the lesser virtues may

be still better illustrated by that long and luminous track made up of minute and almost imperceptible stars, which though separately too inconsiderable to attract attention, yet from their number and confluence, form that soft and shining stream of light every where discernible, and which always corresponds to the same fixed stars, as the smaller virtues do to their concomitant great ones.-Without pursuing the metaphor to the classic fiction that the Galaxy was the road through which the ancient heroes went to heaven, may we not venture to say that Christians will make their way thither more pleasant by the consistent practice of the minuter virtues?

Every Christian should consider religion as a fort which he is called to defend. The meanest soldier in the army if he add patriotism to valour, will fight as earnestly as if the glory of the contest depended on his single arm. But he brings his watchfulness as well as his courage into action. He strenuously

defends every pass he is appointed to guard, without inquiring whether it be great or small. There is not any defect in religion or morals so little as to be of no consequence. Worldly things may be little because their aim and end may be little. Things are great or small, not according to their ostensible importance, but according to the magnitude of their object, and the importance of their consequences.

The acquisition of even the smallest virtue being, as has been before observed, an actual conquest over the opposite vice, doubles our moral strength. The spiritual enemy has one subject less, and the conqueror one virtue more.

By allowed negligence in small things, we are not aware how much we injure religion in the eye of the