posed, and the incalculable importance of those things they have neglected. It is natural, it is proper, that such men should be anxious, thoughtful, and at times even deeply afflicted; and in pointing out the very obvious causes of distress to Christians so situated, I believe I am accounting for a considerable part of the evil we lament, after deducting what arises from causes not at all peculiar to religious persons.

Some there are, who, by the special grace of God, having been born of excellent parents, and trained up in “the nurture and admonition of the Lord," far from the haunts of corruption, have encountered few temptations, and therefore have comparatively few open and flagrant sins to repent of. To such as being thus favoured, have improved their inestimable advantages; religion is indeed a cloudless sun, "the source of light, and life, and joy, and genial warmth, and plastic energy." But public education is now fashionable; and it seems to be accepted as a clear truth, that no intellectual eminence can be expected without it. Whether this be so, let abler judges determine; it is enough for me to observe, that few parents possess courage enough to question the certainty of this axiom, or (which would be much more noble) while they allow its authority, to prefer sanctity of morals before any literary endowments. Public schools, however, are the very seats and nurseries of vice. It may be unavoidable or it may not; "Non est leve tot puerorum observare manus;" but the fact is indisputable. None can pass through a large seminary without being pretty intimately acquainted with vice; and few, alas! very few, without tasting too largely of that poisoned bowl. The hour of grace and repentance at length arrives, and they are astonished at their former fatuity.

The young convert looks back with inexpressible regret to those hours which have been wasted in folly, or worse than folly; and the more lively his sense of the newly discovered mercies, the more piercing his anguish for past indulgences. Is it not natural, is it not fitting, that a Christian so situated should for some time be at least serious? Is it nothing to have provoked the God of all power, and purity, and mercy? Nothing to have crucified our Redeemer afresh? Nothing to have grieved the Spirit of consolation? We may forget, but the Creator and Lord of the universe will not forget. We may suffer our former crimes to fade away in the vista of succeeding years; but to God there is neither past nor future. HE IS. Before the throne of his justice our sins are for ever present; and from that throne must the thunders of vengeance for ever be poured forth, if their rage had not been exhausted in the sufferings of the redeeming Emmanuel. Let us not think it strange then, if they who were once the "servants of sin," are seen at times mourning over their errors. Such sorrow, it must be allowed, is, to say no more, at least a seemly attendant of regeneration. Her tears shall soften the smiles of reviving joy; and the incense of gratitude ascend to heaven with a sweeter savour, if wafted by the sighs of a broken and contrite heart.

But the pangs of recollection are not the only griefs which agitate the young convert. There are groans for the past, and fears for the future. Conversion is not the work of a day. In truth, religious habits are like other habits, they "grow with our growth;" and he must be ignorant of human nature, as well as of experimental religion, who thinks that neither time nor exercise is necessary to "build up the perfect man." In the infancy of Chris

tianity, as in the infancy of life, we tremble at the rustling of a leaf. Our fears are necessary to our safety. Yet the Apostle is right," Fear hath torment." Our consolation is this, "that the divine strength is made perfect in our weakness."

Besides all this, though I would not be thought either superstitious or presumptuous, I cannot help thinking, that it generally seems good to our heavenly Father to visit his adopted children, and particularly those who were once rebellious, with special afflictions, proportioned to their necessities, sometimes open, and sometimes secret, not only as trials of our faith, but to humble us and wean us more entirely "from a world we love too well." This opinion will seem probable or groundless to different Christians according to their several experiences; yet I must think that He, who understood these matters full as well as we, meant to describe, and has actually described the common course and stages of our pilgrimage, when he tells us to " rejoice in tribulations; because tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope." Here we see that the race begins in pain, but ends in triumph. "We sow in tears, but reap in joy." Be this however as it may; we may obviously expect from the causes above assigned, that many young converts will be occasionally dejected; and unless my assumptions are unfounded, a considerable share of the melancholy visible in religionists is thus sufficiently accounted for.

Yet after all, the view which I have taken of this subject is in some sense still imperfect. The principal causes have been noticed, which account for the apparent dejection of Christians, where it is habitual or frequently recurring; but where it is only occasional, the sources are as

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various as the dispositions of men, and the diversified events of life. Melancholy may sometimes be a trial from God, and sometimes a temptation from the Devil. Men are sometimes weak in faith, and sometimes erroneous in practice. Christians too are not at all exempted from the cares and distresses of the world. They are exposed to bodily disease, and to mental anxieties. They are plagued like others by their children and their servants, harrassed with points in law or casuistry, frightened by dreams, alarmed with politics, and eat, drink, walk, or talk themselves into melancholy. "Quantulacunque adeo est occasio sufficit." That is to say, in the weakness of our present nature, the most trifling incident may produce a transient depression; and we might as well attempt to assign a cause for every change of the wind, as for every fluctuation of the spirits. There is however one occasion of melancholy which I shall particularize, because it is not only 'of a general nature, but is, and from its nature must be, peculiar to sincere Christians. Mr. Hume said he never knew a religious man who was not melancholy; to which Bishop Horne replied, " that the sight of him would make a devout person melancholy at any time." The good Bishop was happy at repartee; but what he stated with pleasantry, is very seriously true. The world is a scene of woe, and such infidel philosophers as Mr. Hume enjoy only a dreadful pre-eminence in guilt and misery. Nothing but the moral apathy which we partly inherit with our corrupt nature, and have in part contracted by habit, could render us as insensible as we are to the wretchedness which surrounds us. The Christian feels this more sensibly than other men. As his moral nature is refined, his moral feelings are quickened. He becomes more

acutely and painfully alive to the indignities which he sees daily offered to his best benefactor; more conscious, (and who can be conscious without compassion?) of the tempest gathering over the heads of the hapless criminals. We weep over a widow or orphan faint with disease, and pining away in solitude; and we do well. These are the best instincts of our nature. Yet such a scene, though wrought up with all the savage horror which the pencil of a Michael Angelo could give it, is mild, and gay, and joyous, compared with the hideous spectacle of an immortal and accountable agent plunging hourly deeper and deeper in destruction, whirled on blindly and impetuously to the very brink of the fiery gulph that yawns to receive him. The tender Christian, in contemplating such an object, is forced to realize the fiction of the painter, and hide his eyes from those miseries which he cannot relieve, yet shudders to contemplate.

It is impossible to close this paper without adding a few words on the medicines to be selected by religious men, as the best antidotes to melancholy. We all "lie open to the shafts of the Almighty;" how open, we little think, till his arrows are in our hearts. If however we would find consolations in the moment of affliction, they must not merely be sought at the time of need, but wrought into our moral habit long before. Philosophy will teach us, that to those who are burthened with constitutional melancholy, precepts of wisdom are never less acceptable than in the hour of anguish. When the avenues of the heart are shut to joy, they are seldom open to admonition; and the same causes which throw a gloom over the objects around us, will cast even the best topics of comfort into the common shade. This it was which made the wise king say, "The