grow warmer ftill in connections of a different kind? Follow him, I pray you, into the next ftage of life, where he has entered into engagements, and appears as the father of a family, and you will fee the paffion ftill remainsthe ftream fomewhat more confined,but runs the stronger for it.-The fame benevolence of heart altered only in its courfe, and the difference of objects towards which it tends. Take a fhort view of him in this light, as acting under the many tender claims which that relation lays upon him,-fpending many weary days, and fleepless nightsutterly forgetful of himself, intent only upon his family, and with an anxious heart contriving and labouring to preferve it from diftrefs, against that hour when he shall be taken from its protection. Does fuch a one live to himself?

-He

-He who rifes early, late takes reft, and eats the bread of carefulness, to fave others the trouble of doing fo after him. Does fuch a one live only to himfelf? Ye who are parents, anfwer this question for him, How oft have ye facrificed your health,-your case,— your pleasures, nay, the very comforts of your lives, for the fake of your chil dren? How many indulgencies have ye given up? What felf-denials and difficulties have ye chearfully undergohe for them?-In their fickness, or reports of their mifconduct, how have ye gone on your way, fonrowing? What alarms within you, when fancy forebodes but imaginary misfortunes hanging over them?—but when real ones have overtaken them, and mischief befallen them in the way in which they bave gone, how sharper than a fword

have ye felt the workings of a parental kindness? In whatever period of human life we look for proofs of selfishness,let us not seek them in this relation of a parent, whose whole life, when truly known, is often little elfe but a fucceffion of cares, heart-aches, and difquieting apprehenfions,-enough to shew that he is but an inftrument in the hands of God to provide for the well-being of others, to serve their intereft as well as his own.

If you try the truth of this reasoning upon every other part or fituation of the fame life, you will find it holds good in one degree or other. Take a view of it out of these clofer connections both of a friend and parent.-Confider him for a moment under that natural alliance in which even a heathen poet has placed

him; namely, that of a man ;—and as fuch, to his honour, as one incapable of standing unconcerned in whatever concerns his fellow-creatures.-Compaffion has fo great a share in our nature, and the miseries of this world are fo constant an exercise of it, as to leave it in no one's power (who deferves the name of a man) in this respect, to live to himself.

He cannot stop his ears against the cries of the unfortunate. The fad story of the fatherless and him that has no helper must be heard.-The forrowful fighing of the prisoners will come before him; and a thousand other untold cafes of distress to which the life of man is fubject, find a way to his heart, let intereft guard the paffage as it will— if he has this world's goods, and feeth

bis

bis brother have need, be will not be able to fout up his bowels of compaffion from bim.

Let any man of common humanity, look back upon his own life as fubjected to these strong claims, and recollect the influence they have had upon him. How oft the mere impulfes of generofity and compaffion have led him out of his way?-In how many acts of charity and kindness, his fellow-feeling for others has made him forget himself?

In neighbourly offices, how oft he has acted against all confiderations of profits, convenience, nay fometimes even of justice itfelf? Let him add to this account, how much in the progrefs of his life, has been given up even to the leffer obligations of civility and good manners?What restraints they