own.

to you, perhaps, to some of you, an unknown God. Here are news, not from France, Spain, or either India, but from another world. If, as Christian soldiers, you are unprovided of arms and ammunition, here is a magazine of both, and every weapon more like the sling of David than the heavy armour of Saul. If you would look back, and make a careful research, here are materials for a most useful review, not of other men's works, but of your Men are generally made good or bad by little and little. In this work you have here a little, and there a little,' to make you a good man, that your freedom may not be forced, nor your weakness oppressed by too much at once. Your newspaper or journal is only the amusement of the day; but a day is of infinite consequence to you. A heathen poet says, carpe diem, crop the day, which, like the flower of a tuberose hyacinth, must perish at night. One of greater authority saith, to-day if you will hear the voice of God, harden not your hearts.' Pursuant to the same authority, the journal, here afforded to you, will exhort you daily to consider what you are about, where you are going, and how you are prepared to die, while it is called to-day, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.' Without a good deal more attention than the readers of newspapers are usually blessed with, it is impossible to know the value of a day, nor what that or the next day may bring forth. Were you ever told, that your time and your life are precisely the same thing? or that your time, short as it is, will give that colour to your eternity which can never be changed? Surely any thing that would tell you these, and put you on redeeming your time, as the days of your life are evil, and at present enslaved to pernicious follies, ought to be acceptable, though it should cost you all you have in this world. There is nothing you are so much terrified at as the thought of your own death; it therefore seems very strange, that you should delight in battles, and the deaths of ten or twenty thousand in one day, as if you were to feast with the wolf and the vulture on the flesh of the slain. How can your heart be amused with carnage and slaughter? Or, have you time for mere amusements, though they were more suited to the sentiments of human nature, not to

say, of Christianity? Think a little. Have you time to read of duels, murders, adulteries, &c. and to tell in every company these delightful pieces of intelligence? You, who are hastening to eternity? You, whose state of probation must so soon be brought to its important conclusion? The youngest among you ought keenly to consider this. This, notwithstanding, we frequently see people of both sexes reading newspapers with spectacles. Perhaps human folly never affords a sight more absurd. As the decay of sight is a warning that life is drawing towards a close, and eternity near at hand, the wise Christian should put on spectacles, that he may find those in the word of God, made by Solomon, that admirable optician, whereby it may be seen, that all things under the sun are vanity and vexation of spirit.' The wise Christian, seeing this, will turn his back on this world, and with the telescope of faith at his eye, will follow the star of Bethlehem till it guides him to that superior light which will throw his shadow towards the glimmering sun, and guide him up to the Father of Spirits. He will put on these spectacles, that he may see how to press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus,' and that he may prepare for the grand and final emigration. For the same happy purpose the old lady will put on these spectacles, not that she may search in a newspaper for the most fashionable friseur.

After iterated supplications for your pardon, this writer peremptorily insists on your thanks, if you are still a newsmonger of the old stamp, for the many obscurities, inaccuracies, and blunders which you may find in his miscellany, thrown overboard, on set purpose, as so many empty barrels, for the philosophical whale of infidelity to play with, and for your amusement, as the captives of curiosity, to exercise your critical talent. Lest in this wood, which he shews you, it may be easy for you to miss your way, he directs you to No. 8, 10, 23, 29, 113, 114, 123, 147, 159, 168, 172, 188. These, with at least as many more, you are to thank the writer for. As to such as touch on religious subjects, he draws them from the fountain of living waters,' opened 'for sin and uncleanness;' and is convinced they will be found

harder for the infidel critic to deal with, than even the polished steel of Reid himself. On these he defies even the old dragon to fix his envenomed teeth. Now he knows if you look into his book at all, you will turn directly to the weak places he hath pointed out, as coming from himself alone; but then he is persuaded your curiosity will force you to glance on some of the rest, if it were but just to see what so odd a writer can say on subjects more

serious.

If the public papers you are fond of, are fraught with infidelity, immorality, and faction, you are to blame yourselves for it, because the publishers have nothing else in view, but to accommodate themselves to your taste and humour. It is no easy matter for them to supply you with a daily sheet of such things as will please you, though nothing is to be had in greater plenty. They live by you; and if you love trash, they must sell it to you, or starve. Your love of loose principles, of vice, of faction, of scandal, are to be fed; good books must be condemned, bad ones must be applauded, a menstrual tête-a-tête, or whore and rogue, must be furnished, because you delight in the growth of wickedness, or in the ruin of characters. Were you but half as fond of virtue and piety, they would stuff their publications with instances of chastity, of conjugal fidelity, of justice and charity; nay, with prayers, hymns, meditations, and ejaculations; for such may be had, or might be contrived. But you and they are, at present, unhappily fitted for one another; insomuch that their readers may be damned at the cheap rate of a penny, or threehalfpence. There are prodigious numbers of patriots that cannot afford so high a purchase for the knowledge of politics, and are supplied with newspapers at a halfpeuny a week by the hawkers, the same paper being read every day by twenty or thirty politicians. Of these, there are not a few, that give up so much of their time and attention to the interests of Europe, as wholly to neglect their own, and run themselves deeply in debt. For the benefit of these Decii, confined above stairs, the hawkers carry long slender wauds, with a little slit in one end, by which they put up a paper, some times as high as a garret window, and

take it down again, half an hour after, for the sage perusal of others.

These things are by no means said to condemn the use of newspapers, but merely the abuse. The writer is perfectly sensible, that especially in a trading country, such papers are, in some sort, necessary. He considers the public posts as the very legs of trade, and the newspapers, as its wings; but laments the propagation of bad principles, false politics, the infamy of the innocent, &c. in the same channel. He laments too the loss of time to our manufactures, which trade and industry ought to engross.

The writer of this book, now addressed to you, would convert your taste to somewhat more worthy of rational readers, more noble, more lastingly delightful, more productive of real pleasure, and of that true happiness, you would eagerly pursue, would you but give him leave to instil into your minds its lovely idea. Then, instead of encouragers of infidelity and vice, you would become the blessed patrons and patronesses of every thing that is good and laudable. He would lead you to the Bible. Oh! yes, start not; he would lead you from novels, and the most despicable garbage of reading, to the book of God, wherein you would be taught to look upward at the dignity of your souls, at the love of God for you, at the eternal happiness and glory he invites you to; and, in consequence, would soon see the contempt that is justly due to the fugitive trifles, which hitherto have engaged your mistaken affections. You would there see death hastening to shut up these from you for ever, and to leave you nothing, but good, or guilty consciences, to subsist you in endless joy or misery. In all cases it would be foolish, but in this, fatal, to be looking abroad, when all things are going wrong with you at home. Would you not think it extremely silly to concern yourself about a change in the French ministry, when you know not how to get your dinner? And how much more so to dissipate your time and attention on the trifling affairs of others, when your soul and eternity are at stake, and probably but ill provided for? Should you be so desperately lost, as to be afraid of this,

throw the book from you, and take again your newspaper, your magazine, your review, your novel.

I here take my leave of the press and you, with a request, that, if any thing should be printed in my name after my decease, you will pronounce it spurious, for I will not leave a single line for a posthumous publication. I shall as soon think of walking after my death, as talking.

That God may give you right understanding in all things, is the devout prayer of

YOUR FAITHFUL WATCHMAN.