because their operations are unseen, and their tenour unmarked by others.

We do not say, that he, whose head teems with foolish fancies, is as reprehensible, as he who vents his folly in conversation, or who spreads it over the pages of a book; or that he, who suffers his imagination to dwell on impure ideas, or to portray licentious images, is guilty of a crime, as heinous as that of the wretch, who endeavours to inflame the lusts, or violate the purity of the innocent. We do not say, that Cæsar, brooding over his schemes of ambition in his tent, was as guilty as Cæsar passing the Rubicon, and turning his arms against his country; but we do say, that licentiousness of thought ever precedes licentiousness of conduct; and that many a crime, which stains the page of human nature, was generated in the retirement of the closet, in the hours of idle and listless thought, perhaps over the pages of a poisonous book, or during the contemplation of a licentious picture.

The hints, which we have now suggested, as to the importance of restraining the imagination, cannot be deemed improper in an age, of which it is the misfortune, to be inundated with books, whose smallest fault is their stupidity, and whose only permanent influence, where they have any, tends to pollute all the sources of reflection, to fill the fancy with figures unlike any thing in real life, the understanding with principles inapplicable, doubtful, or dangerous, and the heart with hopes, that it would be folly to realize, with wishes, which it would be ruin to gratify. The imagination, when completely distempered, is the most incurable of all disordered faculties. Watch, then, its first wanderings; and remember, that you have made little progress in the government of yourselves, if your thoughts disdain your control. Remember, also, that, when the thoughts are under

habitual restraint, the government of the tongue, the appetites and passions easily follows.

2. The second branch of self-command is, the government of the tongue. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man. This will not appear an extravagant assertion, when we consider how numerous are the vices, in which this little member takes an active part; that it is this, which wearies us with garrulity, defames us with calumny, deceives us with falsehood; and that, but for this, we should be no more offended with obsceneness, shocked with oaths, or overpowered with scandalous abuse. Well might the apostle write, If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, that man's religion is vain.

If we consider these vices of the tongue in the order of their enormity, we shall see how easily one generates another. Talkativeness, the venial offspring of a lively, not to say an unrestrained fancy, hardly rises to a fault, till it is found, that he, who talks incessantly, must often talk foolishly, and that the prattle of a vain and itching tongue degenerates rapidly into that foolish talking and jesting, which, as an apostle says, are not convenient. Loquacity is forward and assuming, and soon becomes tiresome. The story, a thousand times told, loses, at last, its humour; and a jest, a thousand times repeated, is despoiled of its point, and palls upon the ear. Something must then be found to revive flagging attention; and what is so universally interesting as slander? The faults of our neighbour are then dressed up in all the charms of exaggeration; and the interest of a description is found to be amazingly heightened by a stroke of ridicule, or a tinge of sarcasm. In a listening audience, at every new calumny passed upon another's reputation, some one is found, whose fancied credit revives, and rises on its ruins in all the lustre of comparison. The tongue then riots in its new privilege, till,

at length, "at every word a reputation dies." All this may be done without deliberate malignity, and without violation of truth; because, to speak evil of most men, it is not necessary to speak falsehood, and to pour contempt upon another, it is not necessary to hate or to abhor him. Remember, then, that the tongue must be sometimes restrained, even in uttering truth. To justify a froward mouth by a zeal for truth, is commonly to assign, as a previous motive, what occurred only as an after apology. As we may flatter by an unseasonable and lavish expression of merited approbation, so we may calumniate by an incautious and unrestrained disclosure of real defects. A word spoken in due season, how good is it !-but remember, that death and life are in the power of the tongue, and the tongue of the wise only useth knowledge aright. Thus far the unguarded talker, we observe, may have proceeded without mis-representation, and without mischievous intention; but he, whose vanity has been long flattered by the attention of an audience, will not easily relinquish the importance he has acquired in particular circles, or see, without uneasiness, that interest decline, which his company has been accustomed to excite. Hence, as the stock of scandalous truths is exhausted, fiction lends her aid; and he, who was before only a prater, a jester, or a tattler, degenerates into a liar, who entertains by falsehood, and a calumniator, who lives by abuse; and instances are not unfrequent of men, whose moral sense, by a process similar to this, has become so entirely obscured or corrupted, that they will utter falsehoods with the most unconscious rapidity, and the most unreflecting indifference. Such are the habits, which follow, in alarming progression, from an unrestrained indulgence of the tongue. Is not the danger formidable enough to induce us to say, I am purposed, that my mouth shall not transgress: I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue.

The catalogue of sins is not completed. Impurity and profaneness are not far behind. The first, indeed, bespeaks such grossness of vice, and the latter, such thoughtless impiety, that we presume it is almost superfluous to denounce them in this state of society, and from this place of religious instruction. If, for every idle, unprofitable, false or calumniating word, which men shall speak, thay shall give an ac count in the day of judgment, what account shall those men render, whose conversation first polluted the pure ear of childhood, first soiled the chastity and whiteness of the young imagination, whose habitual oaths first taught the child to pronounce the name of God without reverence, or to imprecate curses on his mates with all the thoughtlessness of youth, but with all the passion and boldness of manhood?

Who then is a wise man, and endued with knowledge among you? Let him show, out of a good conversation, his words with meekness of wisdom; for by thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be condemned.

3. We proceed to the third branch of self-command, the government of the animal appetites. Dearly beloved, I beseech you, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. For how humiliating is the consideration, enough, indeed, to make us weep with shame, that man, the noblest work of God on earth, the lord of this lower world, whose spirit the pure breath of omnipotence breathed forth, whose understanding was formed to grasp at unlimited improvement, and enabled to rise, and purify, and spiritualize, as it enlarged-that this noble creature should suffer himself to fall into the hands of the grovelling mob of appetites, and to be fettered by base lusts, which ought to be his slaves -that this ethereal spirit should be wasted in the service of sensuality, and this intelligence, capable of mounting to heaven, be sunk and buried in the slime and pollution of gross and brutal pleasures

When you look around you, then, and see, on every side, how vast is the number of immortal souls, chained to earth, and lost to heaven, how deeply deplorable is the sight? Will you direct your observation to the lower classes of society? There may you see intemperance boasting of its victims. You see limbs enfeebled, and faculties clouded with intoxication. You meet, at every turn, the ruins of robustness; and of understanding you hardly discern the parting vestiges. Will you ascend to the rich and more polished classes of society? You see luxury in the room of intemperance, and a refined epicurism taking the place of vulgar sensuality. Instead of intoxication, stretched on a pallet of straw, you see repletion, reposing on a bed of down. Instead of an appetite, craving for its burning draught of daily poison, you see a fastidious taste, nicely discriminating flavours, and pronouncing upon delicacies, a sated palate, longing for variety, and rejecting it, as soon as offered. Instead of the reeling of vulgar drunkenness, you see sluggish bodies, bloated by habitual excess, or else pining away in the midst of luxury and abundance, till sickness imposes too late the restraints, which reason could not enforce, or sudden death snatches his gorged and swollen victim from the very table of his revels.

But to descant on the evils of an intemperate indulgence of lust and appetite, is, perhaps, useless. Instances are numerous within every one's observation, and admonitions are to be found in the page of every moralist. The most frequent operation of unrestrained desires discovers itself in an inordinate pursuit of pleasure, or what is, with great significancy, called, in modern times, dissipation. To analyze this species of pleasure, is almost impossible. It is the well known tyrant of modern society, the idol of restless and unoccupied minds. The inquiry of its numerous votaries is not, what shall we eat, or what shall