COVETOUSNESS.

COVETOUSNESS swells the principal to no purpose, and lessens the use to all purposes; disturbing the order of nature, and the designs of God; making money not to be the instrument of exchange or charity, nor corn to feed himself or the poor, nor wool to clothe himself or his brother, nor wine to refresh the sadness of the afflicted, nor oil to make his own countenance cheerful; but all these to look upon, and to tell over, and to take accounts by, and make himself considerable, and wondered at by fools, that while he lives he may be called rich, and when he dies may be accounted miserable. It teaches men to be cruel and crafty, industrious and evil, full of care and malice; and, after all this, it is for no good to itself, for it dares not spend those heaps of treasure which it snatched.*

CHRISTIAN CENSURE.

It was an exemplar of charity, and reads to us a rule for our deportment towards erring and lapsed persons, that we entreat them with meekness and pity and fear; not hastening their shame, nor provoking their spirit, nor making their remedy desperate by using of them rudely, till there be no

*Holy Living, ch. iv. § 8. See South's sermon on Covetousness, on Luke, chap. xii. verse 15.

worse thing for them to fear if they should be dissolved into all licentiousness. For an open shame is commonly protested unto when it is remediless, and the person either despairs and sinks under the burthen, or else grows impudent and tramples upon it. But the gentleness of a modest and charitable remedy preserves that which is virtue's girdle-fear and blushing; and the beginning of a punishment chides them into the horror of remembrance and guilt, but preserves their meekness and modesty, because they, not feeling the worst of evils, dare not venture upon the worst of sins.*

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. Gal. chap. vi.

Then gently scan your brother man,

Still gentler sister woman;

Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang,

To step aside is human;

One point must still be greatly dark,
The moving why they do it:
And just as lamely can ye mark,
How far perhaps they rue it.

Who made the heart, 'tis he alone
Decidedly can try us,

He knows each chord its various tone,

Each spring its various bias :

Then at the balance let's be mute,

We never can adjust it;

What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted.

BURNS.

THE HOSPITAL.

Ir you please in charity to visit an hospital, which is indeed a map of the whole world, there you shall see the effects of Adam's sin, and the ruins of. human nature; bodies laid up in heaps, like the bones of a destroyed town, hominis precarii spiritus et male hærentis, men whose souls seem to be borrowed, and are kept there by art and the force of medicine, whose miseries are so great that few people have charity or humanity enough to visit them, fewer have the heart to dress them, and we pity them in civility or with a transient prayer: but we do not feel their sorrows by the mercies of a religious pity; and therefore we leave their sorrows in many degrees unrelieved and uneased. So we contract by our unmercifulness a guilt by which ourselves become liable to the same calamities. Those many that need pity, and those infinities of people that refuse to pity, are miserable upon a several charge, but yet they almost make up all mankind. Abel's blood had a voice, and cried to God; and humanity hath a voice, and cries so loud to God that it pierces the clouds; and so hath every sorrow and every sickness.*

The thoughtless are averse from an interruption of their joy; reflection turns from wretchedness which it is unable to relieve. Can we ask gaiety to exchange its light pleasures for the gloom of a prison? the young tree to leave its flowers and its sweetness, or the olive its good fruit? Can we invite opulence, knowing none but self-created wants, to witness

ON HUMILITY.

THE other appendage of her religion, which also was a great ornament to all the parts of her life, was a rare modesty and humility of spirit, a confident despising and undervaluing of herself. For though she had the greatest judgment, and the greatest experience of things and persons that I ever yet knew in a person of her youth, and sex, and circumstances; yet, as if she knew nothing of it, she had the meanest opinion of herself; and

the squalid poverty of him who is bereft of fortune and disowned by friends? The industrious shun him, for he has no industry: the virtuous stand afar off, for he is convicted of crime and piety, fulfilling all other christian precepts, may forget that he has a brother sick and in prison, and visit him not. A. M.

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To this general apathy our country affords one glorious exception. Hearing the cry of the miserable," says Howard, "I devoted my time to their relief, and, in order to procure it, I made it my business to collect materials, the authenticity of which could not be doubted. I hope not "to be entirely deserted in the conflict: if I am the means "of exciting the attention of my countrymen to this impor"tant national concern, of alleviating the distress of pri"soners of procuring them cleanly and wholesome abodes: "of exterminating the gaol fever; of introducing a habit of industry; of restraining the shocking debauchery and immorality which prevail in our gaols and other prisons; if any of these beneficial consequences shall accrue, I shall "be happy in the pleasing reflection, that I have not lived "without doing some good to my fellow creatures; and I "shall think myself abundantly repaid for all the pains 1 "have taken, the time I have spent, and the hazards I have "encountered."

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like a fair taper, when she shined to all the room, yet round about her own station she had cast a shadow and a cloud, and she shined to every body but herself.*

It is in some circumstances and from some persons more secure to conceal visions, and those heavenly gifts which create estimations among men, than to publish them, which may possibly minister to vanity; and those exterior graces may do God's work, though no observer note them but the person for whose sake they are sent: like rain falling in uninhabited valleys, where no eye observes showers; yet the valleys laugh and sing to God in their refreshment without a witness.+

All the world, all that we are, and all that we have, our bodies and our souls, our actions and our sufferings, our conditions at home, our accidents abroad, our many sins, and our seldom virtues, are as so many arguments to make our souls dwell low in the deep valleys of humility.‡

* Sermon on the Death of Lady Carbery.

+ Life of Christ.

Holy Living; chap. 2, § iv.

Bishop Taylor, in his preface to Holy Dying, says— "I shall measure the success of my labours, not by popular noises, or the sentences of curious persons, but by the advantage which good people may receive. My work here is not to please the speculative part of men, but to minister to practice, to preach to the weary, to comfort the sick, to assist the penitent, to reprove the confident, to strengthen weak hands and feeble knees, having scarce any other possibilities left me of doing alms, or exercising that charity by which we shall be judged at doomsday. It is enough for me to be an