hearts and minds, and make them wise and virtuous; how can you properly comply with this duty, if you give full swing to your attachment to all fashionaable dissipations and pleasures; if you leave your children so often and so long from your sight; if all this while you leave them to themselves, or to the charge of others? I will allow that the pleasures you pursue are harmless. But, in the meantime, to what dangers are your children exposed! Probably they are surrounded by vicious persons who put on the mask in your presence, and wait with impatience for the moment when they need be under no restaint. At present, the minds and the hearts of these innocents, whose welfare is so dear to you, lie open to every bad impression, and there is no one by to guard them from seduction. Now probably falls the seed of some fault, some ill quality, or some vice, into their tender hearts, which takes root in secret and in time brings forth a deadly fruit. Now the fairest blossoms of wisdom and virtue that already begin to expand are blighted and withered by a pestilential breath. Suppose however that they are not surrounded by vicious persons, yet are they commonly by such as have not the just and delicate sentiment of the true, the beautiful and good, so necessary to the due formation of a youthful heart; who rarely are free from false maxims, from superstitious errors and prejudices of every kind, and who scarcely ever observe that exact propriety in their discourses and actions which sensible parents obsereve in the presence of their chil dren. All of them circumstances which cannot but be prejudicial to your children, and are often most fatal to them. And can you in such circumstances, frequently and without necessity absent yourselves from your children; and without uneasiness and a smarting conscience pursue idle dissipa.

tions and pleasures, which neither a concern for your health nor the duties of real friendship, require at your hands.

A third evil that arises from an abuse in these matters is that a man thereby becomes habituated to unworthy gratifications. I am not to be informed, that we are terrene creatures; that we cannot be solely employed on invisible and spiritual objects. Yet we are not totally earthly. The better part of our being, the part of us that remains forever, is not dust; it is the offspring of God; it is designed for a heavenly life. If we make what is earthly and temporal our main concern; if we are always busied about such things alone; if we even devote to them the little time that remains to us from our ordinary affairs; then must we of course by insensible degrees become earthly minded. Our rational, our immortal soul must necessarily be injured much, be biassed ever farther and farther from its proper destination, and be ever more unfit for the superior and heavenly life to which it is called. And how can too frequent dissipations have any other effects than these? Will not the attention of those who are attached to them be solely directed to sensual and outward things? Are not various preparations requisite for appearing in great circles with propriety and advantage? Do we not, thus get the habit of setting a greater value on whatever belongs to dress to decoration, to furniture, than they deserve and to hold them for more important things than they really are? Are they not the subjects of most conversations and discourses? Does not the extravagant value that is had for them very frequently excite envy, jealousy and strife? Do they not so universally prevail in most companies, as to make it not rarely a matter of offence to speak of weighty, profitable, moral, and religious concerns, and cause

such subjects to be considered as incompatible with rational mirth? But is not such a way of thinking pernicious in the highest degree? Does it not expose us to the danger of losing sight of God and religion, and the end of our being, in short, every thing that is great and noble? Does it not entice us to a hundred actions that degrade the man, and are contrary to the vocation of the christian? Does it not deprive us of all comfort in misfortune? Does it not render death and eternity, which yet we cannot shun, most dreadful? Is it not manifestly at variance with the temper that is to prevail in the kingdom of the just, and shall we not be rendered by it ever more unqualified for being received into their society hereafter?

Hence, lastly, it happens, that too intense a pursuit of dissipation deprives us of the time necessary to the practice of private devotion, and gradually draws after it a coldness and indifferency towards all religion. Our knowledge, our faith, our hope, our virtue, and piety, must be assiduously nourished and supported by the reading of holy scripture and other good books, by reflection and contemplation, by self examination and prayer, if we would have it to stand out against the attacks of error, of unbelief, of doubtfulness, of disappointments and vice, and to render us wise and happy. To this end the public exercises of devotion and worship, how excellent so ever they are in the main, are not of themselves sufficient, The chief part of what we have to mind in this respect must be performed in retirement. But do you perform this, and can you perform it, you, who so sedulously run after all sorts of dissipation and pleasure? Do you, at least, apply as much time to the augmentation of your knowledge, to the improvement of your heart, to the invigoration of your faith, to the confirmation of your hopes and your piety, as

you consume in the gratification of your appetites for sensual pleasure, or to what you term the duties of good breeding, and the keeping of company? Do not frequently several days glide by, do not at times whole weeks pass away, without one serious reflection that you are christians and designed for eternity; without once examining the state of your mind, and your course of life; without passing one or more hours in such meditations as are profitable to your immortal spirit, and may fit you for the life to come? No wonder, if, with such a conduct, your faith yield to every objection and doubt, your virtue to every temptation, your hopes to every danger; if you dare not venture to manifest your veneration for God and Jesus Christ to the face of the unbeliever or the scorner, and among the friends of vice to maintain the cause of virtue. No wonder if you either become yourself a contemner of religion and the slave of vanity and vice, or that you halt and waver between truth and error, and are continually running from good to bad, from one opinion to another, without ever acting upon just and solid principles. Is not such a condition however extremely hazardous, and have you not ample cause to regard and to avoid, as prejudicial and ruinous, all that plunges and keeps you in it?

These surely are considerations highly adapted to convince every reasonable man, that too frequent dissipations are exceedingly detrimental to us, and that they are inseparably combined with various perils. Should I be so happy as to rouse you to reflect on this matter, and to cause you some alarm on these injuries and this danger; then turn to your ad. vantage the following rules of discreet and christian conduct.

Impartially consider at times the emptiness, the vanity, the irksomeness, of most kinds of dissipation

and pastime, though people in general set so high a value on them. Can you think so freely and undisturbed amidst them, can you speak so familiarly and frankly, and so safely appear in your natural frame, as you ought, were they actually to be the recreation of your mind? Do you not commonly find yourself obliged to watch with far more attention over yourself, and to observe all your words and gestures than in the most important affairs, if you would neither affront any one, nor expose yourself to ridicule ? Are you not very often reduced to the necessity of straining all the faculties of your mind in the most unpleasant manner, to fill up the vacuity of conversation by a thousand frivolities? Do you not in many other instances feel an irksome constraint? In how many kinds of dissipation and pastime may not the passions be stirred up, whether the love of lucre, or ambition, or anger, which are equally hurtful both to body and mind, and which consequently have no right to the appellative of recreation and solace? and wherein at length consists the so much vaunted pleasure of the generality of great companies, the generality of public and private entertain. ments? All men eagerly run in quest of this pleasure, but no one finds it; and yet no one is honest enough to say that he has not found it, because he is afraid of contradicting the judgment of the rest, and of being accused of a want of taste. Therefore every one boasts against his conviction, of a pleasure he has not enjoyed, or only in a low degree; and by these means alone are most kinds of dissipation and amusements supported in the unmeritted reputation which prejudice, misrepresentation, and a false shame have conferred upon them.

Another rule of conduct is this:-Often and seriously reflect on the inestimable value of time, and the extreme velocity of it. How much I pity the