thing is a part, and with refpect to which not the smallest atom is either foreign or detached. Wide as its extent, is the wisdom of its workmanship, not bounded and narrow, like the humbler works of art. The vegetable rises above the mineral fron being animate, but with perfect infenfibility. The brute poffeffes a fense of what is pleasurable and painful, but stops at mere fenfation, being unable to investigate causes. The rational man, like the brute, has all the powers of mere fenfation, but enjoys fuperadded a further transcendent faculty, by which it is made conscious, not only of what it feels, but of the powers themfelves, which are the fources of those very feelings, a faculty which can penetrate into the fecret caufes of nature. Hence to the rational alone is imparted that mafter-science, or MORAL PHILOSOPHY. Happy, too happy, did we know our own felicity; did we reverence the dignity of our own fuperiour character, and never wretchedly degrade ourselves into natures to them fubordinate. And yet, alas! it is a truth too certain, that as the rational only are fufceptible of a happiness truly excellent, fo these only plunge themselves into miferies patt endurance.

VOL. IV.

5 F

Affift

Affift us then, THOU POWER DIVINE, with the light of that reason, of which our own is but a particle or spark; by which grace and beauty is diffused through every part of nature, and the welfare of the whole is ever uniformly upheld. So teach us to know ourselves, that we may attain that knowledge, which alone is worth attaining. Check our otherwife vain and idle researches into the laws of animated bodies, and the relations they stand in with respect to external objects, till we have learnt and can practise those laws which peculiarly respect ourselves. Teach us to be fit actors in that general drama, where thou haft allotted every being, great and small, its proper part, the due performance of which is the only end of its existence. Enable us to curb our defires within due bounds. Enable us even to fufpend them, till we can employ them to our real emolument. Be our firft work to eradicate the weeds of prejudice; that the mind, thus rendered free, may with fafety proceed to feek its genuine good and happiness. When we are thus previously exercised, thus duly prepared, let not our love there stop, where it first begins; but infenfibly conduct it, by thy invifible influence, from lower objects to

higher,

higher, till it arrive at that SUPREME, where only it

can find what is adequate and full. THEE, and thy divine adminiftration.

Teach us to love

Let our life be a

conftant energy of the mind in regulating the various affections of the foul; a continued fcene alfo of acquiescence and of gratitude; of gratitude, for what we enjoy; of acquiefcence, in what we fuffer; as both can only be referable to that chain of events, which cannot but be beft, as being by THEE approved and chofen.

* Vide the Section, A Vindication of the Ways of PROVIDENCE in the Establishment of general Laws, at the end of this volume.

SECT. LXXVI.

LAW II.

A TOO GREAT EXCITEMENT OF THE MIND EN

FEEBLES THE POWERS OF THE UNDERSTANDING

AND WEAKENS THE BODY.

OF EXHAUSTION.

THE ftate of exhauftion in the nerves as in the irritable fibre, may be either,

1. Temporary, or

2. Irreparable.

In the state of temporary exhaustion, the mind is tired, and, like the body, recovers its due tone only by rest: but in the state of permanent exbauftion this recovery is irreparable.

SECT.