We lighten our own burden when we bear the bur den of others. Duty, virtue, morality, benevolence, or by whatever name we call thinking and acting for social good, is only neglected by a blind selfishness, not an enlightened selfishness; and its employment, with the personal complacency and satisfaction thence arising, is one thing which the wise hath more than the fool.

We ascend another step. We suppose two men alike convinced that virtue or duty is involved in their own greatest happiness. It is by another and yet higher application of wisdom, that this conviction is carried out into successful effect. In no particular is the superiority of the wise over the fool more ap. parent than in the discharge of duty, the practice of virtue, the exercise of benevolence. The enemies of the theological merit of good works have said, that 'hell is paved with good intentions.' Certainly a huge pile of misery on earth has been built up by good intentions, laboring most diligently, but without wisdom for their presiding architect. Good intention often sacrifices the real, solid, permanent welfare of children, their education, and their future character, to the dictates of fashion, or the vanities of station. Good intention has often desired to keep the people ignorant, or stint their knowledge, that they may thereby be more orderly and religious. Good intention spends often more on the most feeble and obsolete apparatus of instruction, than would put in action the best machinery. Good intention, by its mistaken charities, makes, to some, labor less profitable than mendicity, and extinguishes the prudence and self-reliance that it is the noblest charity to cher

ish.

Good intention supports the monopolies and restrictions which maintain hundreds, overlooking the remoter, but not less certain consequences, that they reduce the thousands to starvation. This 'hath the wise more than the fool,' the most virtuous fool, that when he means to do good, he does good-the very difference between Saul the persecutor for God's glory, and Paul the Apostle for men's salvation.

Man

There is yet another and a last gradation. is made not only to live, but to die; not only for this world, but also for the world to come, not only for time, but for eternity. And Providence has established the same connexion between the religious and the moral principle, as exists between the moral and the prudential. The measure of the happiness of life cannot be filled to the brim, unless there flow in upon it anticipations of the happiness of immortality. He is not wise for the present, who allows not futurity to enter into his calculation. He cannot, as we have already seen, attain the best and purest earthly happiness without philanthropy; and it is religion which gives philanthropy its strongest motives, and its widest sphere, and its brightest hopes. The wise man, in his benevolent efforts, will perceive this; he will be urged towards the practical faith of a God, of a providence, of an hereafter. That faith will complete the elevation of his soul, from the lowest selfishness to the highest benevolence. It will inspire his heart with strength, when the fool is fainting who hath said in his heart, that 'there is no God.' There is a radical imperfection in our views of society, of virtue, of happiness,

unless they include the ideas of religion; they alone can give symmetry and completeness to the universal plan, and harmonize the feelings of the individual with his relation to the general system. But religion itself requires wisdom for the perception of its grandeur, the direction of its impulses, and the realization of its blessings. The happiness of another world is the end; and the formation of a character fitted for the enjoyment of that happiness, the appropriate means. The contented ignorance, the heartless formality, the base servility, the complacent bigotry, the cold indifference, the unexceptionable uselessness, in which men think to go to heaven, as they call it, because here they abstained from whatever was offensive to common opinion, and believed as their priest, church, or catechism taught, and lived very regular and respectable lives, are but in the same condition of contrast with real wisdom that we have been tracing all through. They hope for heaven, as the fool hopes for wealth, by a fortuitous and arbitrary conjunction; and not in the fixed course of cause and effect. They do not use the means of future happiness, the only means which can avail, however much they may have of future existence. Those who shall be like Christ hereafter must be the sons of God now. The wise make a good use of time; therefore, it will be a blessing to them to be gifted with eternity. The wise cultivate the enjoyment of whatever there is of beauty and sublimity here; therefore, it will be a blessing to them to live in a world, or freely to range all worlds, where the loveliest dreams of imagination will be realized, and nature assume far nobler forms at the bidding of him who is the first

good, first perfect, and first fair. The wise identify themselves with their fellow creatures, and mourn with the mourner, and rejoice with the joyous; and have a voice for truth, and a heart for humanity, and energy and effort for improvement; and, therefore, it will be a blessing to them to join the assembly of the just, and become ministering spirits of the God of love, and do in heaven the will which, as far as they could, was done by them on earth. The wise have studied the character and attributes of the infinite God, and endeavored to imbibe his spirit, and bear his moral likeness, and, therefore, it will be a blessing to them, when 'they shall see his face,' and 'his name shall be in their foreheads,' and they shall surround his eternal throne. But what is heaven to him who has not thus, by its previous influences, been fashioned for its possession? What will his unquestioning faith, but a faith as unfelt as undoubted; what will his unquestioned conduct, but a conduct as devoid of the heart and soul of goodness, as it is free from the world's imputation-what will these avail him there? He may not be the subject of suffering; but what can he know and taste of the higher kinds of spiritual enjoyment? He has not prepared himself for the true heaven of the Gospel; he has been expecting some external, and arbitrary, and positive sort of reward; and it is to him like the gift of a rich and ample library to a man who cannot read; or of Grecian statues and Italian paintings to one who has no taste for, or perception of, the beauties of form and color, grace in the execution, or genius in the design. Why, let a man contemplate even a brief residence in a foreign land, and

he endeavors to make some previous acquirement which may increase his pleasure therein; he trains himself into some previous fitness. Let him expect the possession of some station of emolument or influence, and he does something to qualify himself the more fully to inherit its advantages or the more ably to employ its powers; and yet the fool in religion thinks to go to glory without those qualities of head, heart, and character; the piety and purity, and dignity and beneficence; which alone are fitness for heaven—which are an anticipated heaven while we are on earth, and without which there would be no heaven to all eternity. This 'hath the wise more than the fool;' in religion as in all things else, that he adapts the means to the end; prepares himself for the inheritance which is prepared for him, dies daily to live eternally, and retires from his good and faithful service, to enter into the everlasting joy of his approving Lord.

The question is answered, then;-answered by Providence itself in a connected series of lessons, the instruction of which it is man's best wisdom to imbibe. Without common prudence, foresight, skill and industry, man cannot reasonably expect to gain wealth and competence: without the cultivation of intellect and taste, wealth cannot give more than a gross, unsatisfactory, and little better than animal enjoyment; without moral qualities, sympathies, social interest and efforts, the pleasures of intellect and fancy will satiate and pall: without reflection, judgment, solid principles rightly applied, those sympathies and interests will often run to waste and turn to bitter