"TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE."

THIS is SOLOMON's theory, and I like it; his practice was rather too extensive, for in his luxurious palace, seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines were better than one. Whether the women of Jerusalem were composed of more manageable materials, than modern females, I am at a loss, for JOSEPHUS, whose works I have turned over to gain infor­mation on this knotty point, says nothing of the matter. However, I am inclined to think SOL­OMON made his domestick arrangement soon after he "planted vineyards." Had he chosen a graver moment, he would not have told the most confidential of his eunuchs, that seven hundred expensive wives, and three hundred capricious concubines, were better than one. Why the revenues of gold paved Jerusalem, or the bagnios of its suburbs could not have fur­nished robes for the married dames, nor rakes for the free! Men, sage like SOLOMON, are gen­erally [Page 6] moderate in their arithmetick of pleas­ures. But this was too bold a sum in multipli­cation, even for a polygamist to work.

In all probability, SOLOMON, though the ori­ental writers expatiate upon his resources, found his stock too scanty for the many and great claims, which "the daughters of Jerusalem" must have made. For late in life, when the "pitcher" was broken, and the "silver cord" of love loosed, and his "desires failed," we find him gravely composing a sententious proverb, in praise of sociability, and reducing a thousand companions to one. His reasons too, are not drawn as they would have been, when he form­ed his Seraglio, from passion and pleasure, but from utility. For he supports his opinion by arguing, in the context, that "two are better than one," because in difficulty, or in battle, they mutually assist, or bedded in a frosty night, they keep each other warm.

Although, in remarking upon SOLOMON's voluptuousness, I have been moved from my natural gravity, as a preacher, yet let not the wanton reader, construe my sermon as a satire upon the sage Prince. After animadverting upon the excess of his practice, it is my inten­tion to echo the benevolence and utility of his social principle.

"Two are better than one." Dr. FRANK­LIN thought so, when he recommended early marriages. As I am of singular continence myself, I know nothing of the matter, but St. [Page 7] PAUL, an apostle of experience, tells bachelor and virgin christians, that it is better to marry than burn. If they feel this heat, therefore, let them quench it in legal couples, and choose for the wedding ring posy, "Two are better than one." My physician declares that in these de­generate days, when illicit love is common, ear­ly marriage is favourable to health; the philos­ophers affirm that it is to morals. The Preach­er, therefore, concludes that "two are better than one" applied to matrimony, is a precept productive of happiness, and that a young man, who will reject all the concubines, and six hun­dred and ninety nine of the wives, which SOL­OMON thought necessary, may be pronounced wiser, as it respects women, than that Prince.

In the dark ages, as they were justly stiled, devotional men used to think that St. PETER, the porter of Heaven's wicket, would not open it, but to one at a time. Accordingly, monks and hermits would wander, or reside solitary in desarts and caves, and insist that an error had crept into the proverbs, and that SOLOMON cer­tainly wrote "One is better than two." This was a vile interpretation; and, if they had med­itated their Bibles well, they would have dis­covered that the founder of their religion was never so happy, as when "much people" sur­rounded him, and that the Apostles chose com­panions in their travel; the one sat socially at a wedding supper, and the others resorted to the temples, the town hall, and the market place.

[Page 8]I grieve to see a melancholy man, moping in the chimney corner, refusing to "eat bread," and, when the cup goes round, unwilling to pledge a bumper.—Trust me, thou son of spleen, happiness is doubled by participation. [...], and be, even as this publican; be social, [...] go to the door of thy tent, and if thou [...] man of understanding pass by, intreat him with a "turn in hither, I beseech thee" So shall the "evil spirit" flee, as of yore, from the harp of the shepherd, and all the cares of thy heart be lulled by the pleasant com­munion of a friend.

"WHEN THOU SEEST A MAN OF UNDER­STANDING, GET THEE BETIMES UNTO HIM, AND LET THY FEET WEAR THE STEPS OF HIS DOOR."

YES, in a world of weak ones, it is our du­ty, it will be our pleasure, and, ye selfish generation, it will be for our interest too, to yield favors to the wise, and bread to men of under­standing. Our patronage will be but rarely ex­ercised, and few will be the loaves for these wise men to devour, for I looked and lo! they are a solitary and scanty band, unobtrusive, like the hermit of the mountains.

[Page 9]But, though the "man of understanding" is rarely to be seen, and, though it would profit us much under the sun, to gather the honey of his lips, such is our perverseness, our folly, or our fate, that, untrodden by our "feet," we suf­fer the moss to gather on the "steps of his door."

My study window overlooks the house of an eminent physician; he understands accurately, the nice movements of the human machine; he is a botanist, skilled in the properties of plants, the cedar of Libanus, and the "hyssop on the wall;" he has meditated the system of nature, and he has tried many of the processes of art. I see him turning over the volumes, which con­tain the secrets of medicine, and I hear him de­scribe skilfully the various modes to blunt, or to extract, the arrows of disease. But alas! my careless countrymen, "all this availeth him nothing." The blind, the maim and the halt, of our villages, refuse bread to this "man of understanding," and measure their wheat in brimming bushels, to the quack, who cannot distinguish between a fever and the gout, who applies his nippers to a wart, and thinks he ex­tracts a cancer, who poisons you with mercu­rials, curdles your blood with calomel, drenches you with enfeebling teas, and, as a wit once ex­pressed it, prescribes draughts so neutral, they declare neither for the patient nor the malady. If the Royal Preacher, in whose writings I find my text, had seen whole villages, clamorous at [Page 10] the midnight hour, for a foetid quack, and his powders, and "passing by on the other side," when they see the regular practitioner, he would have forgotten, for a moment, all the wisdom of the East, and, like provoked PETER, in the Gospel, would "curse and swear" at such egre­gious folly.

Those of my readers, who will gladly turn out of the paths of error, when they hear a warning voice behind them, "here is a better path, walk therein," will I hope learn the value of "men of understanding." When their value is once known—the "steps of their door" will be hour­ly ascended. They will teach us how to think, to speak, and to act. If Divines, they will not attempt to persuade you, that Heaven cannot be taken, but by the violence of Scotch divin­ity. If Lawyers, they will not demand exorbi­tant fees, to support a rotten cause. If Physi­cians, you will hear them utter no words more cramp than "Temperance," and "Regimen." If Moralists, they will mark the difference be­tween wisdom and cunning, they will point out the weakness as well as wickedness of those petty frauds, those iniquitous contracts, those tricking arts of jockeyship, so frequent and so disgraceful a­mong a rural people, where nought but simplici­ty should be found. To such divines you will cheerfully vote a more ample annual salary, than sixty pounds, and you will receive in exchange that wisdom, which we are assured, in a volume of the highest authority, is better than rubies.

"HOW LONG WILT THOU SLEEP, O SLUG­GARD? WHEN WILT THOU ARISE OUT OF THY SLEEP?"

NOT until you have had another nap, you reply, not until there has been a little more folding of the hands!

Various philosophers and naturalists, have attempted to define man. I never was satisfied with their labours: Absurd to pronounce him a two legged, unfeathered animal, when it is ob­vious he is a sleepy one. In this world▪ there is business enough for every individual. A sparkling sky over his head, to admire, a fertile soil under his feet to till, and innumerable ob­jects, useful and pleasant to chase. But, such in general is the provoking indolence of our species, that the lives of many, if impartially journalized, might be truly said to have consist­ed of a series of slumbers. Some men are in­fested with day dreams, as well as by visions of the night: They travel a certain insipid round, like the blind horse of the mill, and, as BOL­INGBROKE observes, perhaps beget others to do the like after them. They may sometimes o­pen their eyes a little, but they are soon dim­med by some lazy fog, they may sometimes stretch a limb, but its effort is soon palsied by procrastination. Yawning, amid tobacco fumes, they seem to have no hopes, except that their bed will soon be made, and no fears, except that [Page 12] their slumbers shall be broken, by business clamouring at the door.

How tender and affectionate is the reproach­ful question of SOLOMON, in the text. When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? The Jewish Prince, whom we know to be an active one, from the temple which he erected, and from the books he composed, saw, when he cast his eyes around his city, half his subjects asleep. Though in many a wise proverb, he had warn­ed them of the baneful effects of indolence, they were deaf to his charming voice, and blind to his noble example. The men servants, and the maid servants whom he hired, nodded over their domestick duties in the royal kitchen, and when in the vineyards he had planted, he look­ed for grapes, lo they brought forth wild grapes, for the vintager was drowsy.

At the present time, few SOLOMONS exist, to preach against pillows, and never was there more occasion for a sermon. Our country be­ing at peace, not a drum is heard to rouse the slothful. But, though we are exempted from the tumult and vicissitudes of war, we should re­member there are many posts of duty, if not of danger, and at these we should vigilantly stand. If we will stretch the hand of exertion, means to acquire competent wealth, and honest fame abound, and when such ends are in view, how shameful to wilfully close our eyes. He, who surveys the paths of active life, will find them so numerous and lengthy, that he will feel the [Page 13] necessity of early rising, and late taking rest, to accomplish so much travel. He, who pants for the shade of speculation, will find that Litera­ture cannot flourish in the bowers of indolence and monkish gloom. Much midnight oil must be consumed, and innumerable pages examined, by him whose object is to be really wise. Few hours has that man to sleep, and not one to loiter who has many coffers of wealth to fill, or many cells in his memory to store.

Among the various men, whom I see in the course of my pilgrimage through this world, I cannot frequently find those, who are broad a­wake. Sloth, a powerful magician, mutters a witching spell, and deluded mortals tamely suffer this drowsy being to bind a fillet over their eyes. All their activity is employed, in turning them­selves like the door, on its rusty hinge, and all the noise they make in this world is a snore. When I see one, designed by nature for noble purposes, indolently declining the privilege, and heedless, like ESAU, bartering the birthright, for what is of less worth than his red pottage of len­tiles, for liberty to sit still and lie quietly, I think I see, not a man, but an oyster. The drone in society, like that fish, on our shores, might as well be sunken in the mud and inclos­ed in a shell, as stretched on a couch, or seated in a chimney corner.

The season is now approaching fast, when some of the most plausible excuses for a little more sleep must fail. Enervated by indulgence, [Page 14] the slothful are of all men most impatient of cold, and they deem it never more intense, than in the morning. But the last bitter month ^* has rolled away, and now, could I persuade to the experiment, the sluggard will discover that he may toss off the bed quilt, and try air of early day without being congealed! He may be as­sured that sleep is a very stupid employment, and differs little from death, except in duration. He may receive it implicitly, upon the faith both of the physician and the Preacher, that morning is friendly to health and the heart, and if the idler is so manacled by the chains of habit, that he can, at first, do no more, he will do wise­ly and well to inhale pure air, to watch the ri­sing sun, and mark the magnificence of nature.

"NEITHER GIVE PLACE TO THE DEVIL."

A CERTAIN writer, though not a Bishop, has somewhere asserted that the Devil goes about in more pleasing shapes, than that of a roaring Lion. It is at those seasons, my readers, when this personage is disguised, or attired in agreeable array, that we should guard against his wiles. If he never assailed us, except when clad in that tremendous coat of armour, given him by the Calvinistick divines, neither St. [Page 15] PAUL, nor a more modern moralist, would cau­tion, you against giving him place. I trow, as my predecessor DANIEL BURGESS says, if JOHN BUNYAN'S Devil alone appeared, that to saucer eyes, a cloven foot and a dragon's tail, not even a hardened sinner would open his gate. But when Satan chooses to walk to and fro in mas­querade through the world, his deformities all hidden, either by a broad mantle, or a flowing robe, then he allures the eye, then he taints the heart.

Now, as we are not ignorant of his devices, and, as MOSES an old authentick historian, has apprized us of his subtlety, it may be useful to those, who carelessly judge of characters from appearance, to describe some of the most com­mon shapes, which the Tempter assumes. Hence, without a very laborious process in reas­oning, it may soon be discovered that many of the most common and favorite objects of pur­suit are the Devil.

A bag of money, for instance, if, we seek it in company with Integrity and Industry, is not only a harmless, but useful acquisition. But when Avarice advises to dig, Knavery to under­mine, or Ambition to soar for it, the possessor, will find a cloven foot in the sack's mouth, in­stead of the cup of BENJAMIN.

A well known Poet once exclaimed, "O grant me honest fame, or grant me none." For this kind of reputation all should be anxious. Without a good name, Man would be poor in­deed. [Page 16] But when, greedy of applause, we hunt after it, in pathless ways, at the expence of mor­als or health: When a drunkard thinks to gain it from an ocean of liquor, or a sensualist by keeping three hundred concubines, when a fop imagines it attached to tawdry clothes, or a malecontent to subversion of government, in all these cases, men are actually striving to give place to the Devil.

When a factious partizan wishes that our lib­erty should corrupt to licentiousness, when he surveys the administration, or reads the speeches of WASHINGTON, and then has the wickedness and effrontery to pronounce him a CAESAR, or a CROMWELL: When he defames JAY as a dupe and parasite, and HAMILTON as a stock­jobber, be assured that the moon beams have glowed intensely on the crazy head of the railer, for he is mad, and hath a Devil!

There has lately arisen a new sect in Philoso­phy, stiled Speculators, not very intense think­ers, but yet, contradictory as it may seem, ab­sorbed in speculation. Like LOCKE, and other profound metaphysicians, they are more con­versant with ideas, than with reality. Like an insane beggar, who sometimes solicits charity at my door, they are perpetually vaunting of vast possessions in land, and muttering about titles, grants and charters. I have been inclined to think they are allied to the noble families of gypsies and jugglers, from the variety and adroit­ness of their sleights of hand. I have turned over, [Page 17] at least, ten different dictionaries, to find a def­inition of the word "Speculation," and after fruitless attempts, I am obliged to frame one myself, and conclude that it means the sale of a cloud, for a valuable consideration. Therefore, as a grave and scriptural author, declares Satan to be "the Prince of the power of the air," we may regularly infer that all transactions of the above nature are within his jurisdiction, and that Speculators give place to the Devil.

The fair sex display in general, such admira­ble taste and judgment, in the choice of their favorites, it is hardly credible that a being so un­gracious and sooty as Satan, could find any quar­ter from their delicacy. But I am assured by a respectable character, well versed in the ways and wiles of women, that, when they scold for hours a worthy husband, or display unreasona­ble caprice, and coquetry to a deserving lover, they not only give place to the Devil, but fre­quently prevent his visit, and act the part of the fiend themselves.

"FAVOR IS DECEITFUL."

UNDOUBTEDLY, though LAVATER, a Swiss clergyman, whose faith, it seems could remove mountains, has, in a book, which [Page 18] treats of faces, asserted that the nose is no cheat, and that he can see every man's character, sit­ting astride on his nose.

This is a whimsical age; who would believe that a man could be found, sufficiently bold, and readers, sufficiently credulous, to suppose that Favor is not deceitful.

More than forty years since, when my grand­mother suffered my elder brother to lead me by the hand into company, I was pleased with all faces. You, charming maid, says I to a smiling lass, have a benevolent countenance, you must lend a favourable ear to my vows—a sudden co­quettish wave of her fan, and a scorning nose proved that Favor was deceitful.

A buyer goes into a country store, and, lean­ing over the counter, asks the shopkeeper for changeable silk. He holds up a piece in a fa­vorable point of view, and smiling plausibly, declaims an hour upon its cheapness and dura­bility. The silk is bought; when daughter DOLLY had worn it two sundays, it was still changeable; spotted with bilge water, and torn by a pin, even one eye might read on the hem that Favour is deceitful?

I recollect that, during my nonage, I rested many hopes upon the plausibility of a simper­ing courtier: He had been educated by the Jesuits, noted for giant promise, and pigmy per­formance. This man had a sweet smile and a silver tongue. His smile and tongue were worth a Prince's ransom to him. He had a wonder­ful [Page 19] knack of being agreeable; as to being useful that was of no consequence. He set up a school for smiling, and his pupils might there learn to nod and smirk cash away from the purse. Noth­ing obstructed this man; every road was a river road to him; his neighbors called him the smoothing plane, he removed all asperities. But all was "false and hollow." He planed away the rough planks of life it is true, but he kept the shavings himself. The man was selfish and his Favor was deceitful.

I saw lately a morose wretch with a book in his hand. His urchin form reminded me of a gnarly crab apple, at once mishapen and sour; the leaves he turned over were Sterne's and his cheeks were moistened by the death of LE FEVRE. How, whispered I, can this man boast sensibility? I know him well, a grinder of poverty's face—who understands distress and sale, better than a deputy sheriff; this is he, who drives away the cottager's cow, and plucks from under her the widow's bed.—I paused; and reflexion convinced me, that his was a mechan­ical and crocodile grief, that though he wept, he could wound, and that his Favor was deceitful.

THOMAS PAINE, that infidel in religion, and that visionary in politicks, seduces many of you, my countrymen. You read his "Age of Rea­son," and think the Bible a last years Alma­nack: You read his "Rights of Man," and think government slavery, and WASHINGTON an imposter. But the man who labors to de­stroy [Page 20] the pious hope, or to raise the serment of faction, is an enemy to your peace. Be your devotions and your government equally undis­turbed: Attendance at church, at least, pre­serves your neatness and sociability. Obedience to government causes you to sit in peace under the fig tree. Trust me, he who jeers received truths, or who tells you that there is no distinc­tion among men, and that all are equally qual­ified to govern, is an imposter more pernicious than Mahomet and his Favor is deceitful.

"AND HE WILL BE A WILD MAN."

IF a young fellow, at every tavern frolick, in­sists upon paying the piper; if you see many hundred yards of tobacco, and gaudy vest pat­terns charged, and long tails of dittos, drawn out on the trader's book, believe the Lay Preach­er, that such a hairbrained, extravagant youth, is on the high road towards a certain publick ed­ifice, noted for its strength, "and he will be a wild man."

Many an honest American farmer, and his wife, who formerly were in constant terror of Indians, and shut themselves in garrisons and forts, to avoid captivity, suppose that, now these wild men of the woods are exterminated by [Page 21] rum, there is room for fear no longer. But there are wild men, roaming about yet, even in towns, which lie many a league from Indian set­tlements. The wild men, whom I now describe, it is true, have neither feathers on their heads, nor moggisons on their feet, jewels are not pen­dent from their noses, nor blankets thrown round their limbs, but still they are dangerous, and wild creatures, as much as if they traversed the woods of Huron, navigated lake Mumphra­magog, or hunted in the Tenesee.

When you hear six pair of sleigh bells jing­ling along the road, about two o'clock in a win­ter morning, when you hear many a drunken curse from the driver, and learn from a tavern keeper, that the owner of the aforesaid sleigh and bells, paid twenty shillings club of the rec­oning, he is a wild man, broke loose from his keeper, and will hardly be tamed.

The prediction, contained in my text, was applied to ISHMAEL, and has been remarkably verified in his descendants, the Arabs. But this roving and lawless people, the generality of geographers and christians, suppose confined to the extended plains of Asia, and dream not, that any of the tribe inhabit this continent. But Ishmaelites, wild as their ancestors, abound; and in the shape of horse jockies, high bucks, and hard drinkers, manifest their wildness a thous­and ways.

The mention of horse jockies, "moves me from my natural moderation." As the jockey, [Page 22] is a very common, and fashionable character too in most villages, his celebrity deserves some consideration. The Lay Preacher acknowl­edges that he, like most sedentary parsons, is an aukward rider, and sits too much in his easy chair, to sit gracefully on a horse. Still, as he is pleased with beauty and grace wherever found, he cannot but be struck with the figure of a no­ble animal, distinguished for those enchanting qualities. He warmly approves therefore, those, who exercise humanity towards the generous steed, and who to an animal, which safely bears them a rugged journey, are liberal of hay, and sparing of the lash. He even allows, to men of property, the indulgence of taste and whim, in choosing a creature of so much elegance and use. But when a man, so far forgets his dignity, as to prefer the stable to the parlour, to be the con­stant companion of ostlers, to use no language but that of the turf, and wear life away in comb­ing a mane, one cannot avoid thinking, that the beast he curries is the nobler animal. A more serious objection can be made to the professed jockey. He not only devotes too much time to the stable, but exercises too much craft, in the purchase and sale of his favorite animal. He not only like Richard in the play, cries "a horse, a horse, a kingdom for a horse," but deems it not only pardonable but praiseworthy, to get what is called the advantage. This phrase means to sell an article, for treble its worth, and to make the bargain, by falsehood and by fraud! [Page 23] The jockey and the gamester, have been fre­quently compared, but he who sports with cards, rarely cheats, except when his adversary is a sharper. Even the gamester has too much honor to cajole the weak and unskilful. But the jockey professes to be a rogue, and even glories in de­frauding, so that he and his associates might, with propriety, hang out a board inscribed, in the phrase of M'Fingal, "Beelzebub and Co." Of all the wild characters that infest a country town, a low, and knavish jockey is the most de­praved, his hand, like that of ISHMAEL, "is a­gainst every man." That it may prove nerve­less, but that on the contrary "every man's hand" may be successful against him, must be the wish of every honest man in the community, and is the prayer of the Lay Preacher.

"BY THIS CRAFT WE HAVE OUR WEALTH."

DEMETRIUS, the silversmith, and "others of the like occupation," of whom such honourable mention is made in the Acts of the Apostles, are not the only persons, who, after playing, like sharpers, the game of interest, can turn round and cry, "Ye know, Sirs, that by this craft we have our wealth."

All the world resorted to church, when par­son [Page 24] Plagiary preached. The old women [...] ­elled, and the deacons groaned in unison with the "vocal nose" of the parson. The Bucks went to hear him, for he was short, and did not kindle hellfire in his pulpit. The Ladies prais­ed his white hand, and vowed that he adjusted the cushion gracefully. The Parson's reputa­tion and salary increased. Sometimes a reform­ed rake would send him a cask of wine, to ani­mate his divinity, and sometimes the ladies would go a shopping, to "Vanity fair," with Madam, and purchase her a dressy cap. Thus our Parson, enjoying more than a disciple's share of the "loaves and fishes," together with a stock of wine from abroad—and of oil at home, went on, from one degree of ease to another, eat full dinners, drank wine literally, for his stom­ach's sake, and then, with a book in his hand, went into his study to—sleep. He grew lazy, copied pages from Dr. Blair, sometimes stole a whole sermon from Sterne, and by this craft, not only had wealth, but fame. Verily, brothers of the pulpit, this was profitable priest­croft!

But of all crafts, a Quack Doctor's craft is the most crafty. It is one of the easiest trades in life. It is not like Jacob's apprenticeship, a seven year's labour, but, like some chapman's books that I used to read, when a boy, is "fa­miliar to the meanest capacity." The receipt to make a quack is shorter, than the shortest in his Dispensatory: Take the first blockhead you [Page 25] can find, get credit for him at the apothecary's for a pound of Cortex, mount him on a pied horse, and bid him speak guttural words. De­pend on it, that my friend the German Surgeon, who has been regularly bred at a foreign univer­sity, and who detects by a glance, the morbid and peccant cause, will be neglected; his lanc­ets will rust in shagreen, while the triumphant pretender has full license to kill, to enter houses, leading captive "silly women," and by this craft to have his wealth.

The country Attorney, I do not mean him, who eloquently defends and generously charges his clients, but that pettifogging scrivener, sy­nonimous all over the world with scoundrel.— The country Attorney, who inflames village disputes, who sues for nine pence, who buys notes of hand cheap and sells them dear, who af­ter receiving ten thousand pounds as his "wages of iniquity," still runs about haunting Justices doors, inquiring "who will shew him any good," who will serve a precept upon the poor widow, and compel her to cast in her last mite into his treasury, is a near relation to Demetrius, and all the silversmith family, and by this cursed craft has his wealth.

Some of the Lay Preacher's friends reproach him for his labours, in an age, when few read, fewer remember, and none believe sermons. Some advise him to sell all he has, and with the merchant in the gospel, to seek "goodly pearls." Others propose a journey to Newyork, and talk [Page 26] with rapture of the schemes of a Speculator. This advice has the usual fate, it only serves to confirm prior resolutions. Preferring Lite­rary to Land speculations, and happy to amuse the vacant, and inform the simple, he studies with zeal to imitate Dr. FRANKLIN, and "The Prompter," and, indolent at his parsonage, thinks some, and smokes the tranquil cigar more. From this humble "craft" is derived the "wealth" of the Lay Preacher.

"IN THOSE DAYS THERE WAS NO KING IN IS­RAEL; EVERY MAN DID WHAT WAS RIGHT IN HIS OWN EYES."

AND when there is no energetick govern­ment in America, each of her subjects will do so too. Do not be offended, my readers, because, this week, I choose to deliniate political, rather than moral truth. You know that, from the establishment of papacy, to the time of Archbishop Laud, the Church has always affect­ed an anxiety for the State. I should not be a true Preacher, were I not sometimes to forget that our order are ministers of the Prince of Peace. The enforcement of virtue, and the re­proof of the sinner, do not always delight: We must sometimes speculate on the decree of Caesar, [Page 27] that all the world should be taxed, and sometimes inquire whence come wars and fightings among men. As the whig Divines in "1775," were instrumental in destroying the old government, perhaps a Federal parson may offer some reasons against subverting the new.

The studies of theology, and the labour of writing these sermons, do not occupy the whole of each week, I have leisure to talk politicks with my neighbours, and to read many of the news­papers from the southward. From them, and, occasionally, from an evening's chat with some traveller from Boston, I learn that certain rest­less and perturbed spirits, under the plausible title of "Democrats," are labouring anxiously to teach proselytes the soothing doctrines of lib­erty and equality. Liberty, such as the Fish­women of Paris enjoyed, when they treated a Queen of France, like a prostitue of the stews; and Equality, such as a LEGENDRE and SAN­TERRE could boast, when the butcher's stall of the one, and brewer's dray of the other, were, in a Revolutionary government, on a level with the throne. I have been in the habit for many years, my readers, of turning over authors, who wrote in the earliest ages of the world, men who understood the meaning of the word, "Liberty" as well at least as the moderns. From these books, and they are of the highest authority, I have learned that civil liberty consists in doing whatever does not militate with laws, restraining individual excesses to promote the publick weal. [Page 28] Observation has further suggested that there are a few, and how few! upon whom the Parent of wisdom has largely bestowed that etherial spirit, that bold and sublime genius, which he has chos­en to withhold from the majority of mankind. Yet farther, it is obvious that in the race for riches, all run, and still but few reach the goal, and bear the prize. It follows, therefore, that he of ample mind, or ample purse will direct the councils, and command the service of him who is weak or poor, and that equality is a visionary whim. God and nature having created such eternal distinctions, how presumptuous, how unavailing for an American bankrupt to pro­claim in the market place to his deluded hearers, that they had been amused with an old wive's fable, but that, the servant might roam where he list, like his master, and that the plough boy, conscious of equality, might journey to Phila­delphia, and claim the Presidency from WASH­INGTON.

I am persuaded that St. PAUL possessed as erect and independent a spirit, and as much sin­cerity, as any leader of a club throughout the Union. The government of his own country was a vice royalty, and probably, therefore, a capricious and arbitrary one. He had visited Rome, felt the power of its Emperors, and lived for years in subjection to laws, which we usually term despotick. Yet this amiable apostle and man of the world, though bold and original in plan and execution, was so convinced of the u­tility [Page 29] of order and due subordination, that, in his epistle to the Romans, who, under the reign of NERO, would have been gratified by revolu­tionary logick, he charges every soul to be sub­ject unto the higher powers. It is worthy of remark, and will shew how important the subject was considered by the apostle, that he maintains the proposition not by political, but religious arguments, for, after declaring that all power was derived from above, he concludes regularly that resistance to "ordained" government was opposition to the supreme will.

I have examined very carefully this great man's epistles to various cities of the East, a quarter of the globe coerced by the sternest laws, and cannot find a single sentence to induce change of officers, or a popular government. Neither Corinthians nor Ephesians are advised to club subordination away. The funding system of Rome is tacitly approved, for PAUL enjoins a rigorous payment of the publick debt, and if an Ambassador were sent to negotiate a Treaty with the faithless Parthians, or the hostile Medes, the Saint did not, when the Envoy returned, call upon his god to curse him, or curse him himself.

But suppose, my countrymen, that we should consider it superfluous, to have a King, or what is the same, good government in Israel; and that every man should be permitted to do what was right in his own eyes. Why, at the great publick table, if each were allowed to carve for [Page 30] himself, what tid bits would the great scramblers devour, and what a sorry meal would the major­ity make! I am convinced that if the fantastick vision of "Equality," could be realized, and men were to roam at large in the wilds of free­dom, that many would faint by the way, and that more would hanker after those savory herbs of Egypt they had abjured. We should be guil­ty of every species of outrage and excess. We should hear the voice of wild misrule, in dark­ness, and the mob that rageth, at noon day. If there was no king in Israel, not to mention what the women would play, men would play the rogue with impunity, and neither life nor prop­erty would be secure. That experiment in pol­iticks, we are now trying in America, if demo­cratick projectors, persevere in interupting the process, would fail ridiculously and tyrants might then aver that mankind instead of being free by nature, were doomed to be slaves.

"GIVE A SWEET SAVOUR, AND A MEMORI­AL OF FINE FLOUR: AND MAKE A FAT OF­FERING."

YESTERDAY, as I was pondering a theme for my next discourse, with an aching head which checked invention, our town clerk enter­ed [Page 31] my study, with newspapers in his hand. Men of his class being naturally fond of poli­ticks, and anxious for the publick weal, I there­fore, when he read to me with emphasis that the French had effected the passage of the Rhine, listened with pleasure. As he threw pe­rused papers carelessly down by his side, I pick­ed them up, and, as it behoved a Preacher, look­ed for the grave and the moral. The man of news and the world will smile, when I add, that no articles so attached my attention, as the Thanksgiving proclamations of the three neigh­bouring states. When I saw from my window, "our garners full of store," and "presses burst­ing" with the juice of our orchards; when I heard numerous kine low, and "the voice of the turtle in our land," I felt the propriety of de­votional gratitude, and was delighted, that pub­lick commemoration of annual favours, was the custom of our country.

In the most rude, as well as refined ages, a lively perception of benefits, conferred by Su­preme Power, has caused mankind to "give a sweet savour, and a memorial of fine flour: and to make a fat offering." Long before Christian­ity had shed its lustre on the nations, we find the Jew, the Roman and the Greek, raising the pe­riodical hymn to the skies. Though their creeds, dictated by superstitious ignorance were clashing and various, yet gratitude to the "giver" was one and the same. If a general had by enterprize enlarged, or by obstinacy had [Page 32] defended, empire; if the "sweet influences of the Pleiades" had operated, and Italian grana­ries burst with plenty, the grateful ancients de­creed the festal day, and all orders, careless of business or pleasure, thronged the temples, and thanked the Beneficent Power. Thanksgiving was one of the first acts of devotion, described by the sacred Historian. In the very infancy of time, amid the simplicity of pastoral life, we be­hold a striking scene, the amiable ABEL, that blameless shepherd, selecting the fairest of the flock, and sacrificing them on the first altar. From a social supper, with his disciples, from crowds of penitent or applauding Jews, we find the master christian retiring to the solitude of Mount Olivet, to render thanks, that neither the persecuting Pharisee, nor the subtle Sadducees had abridged his life, or invalidated his doctrine. St. PAUL, who combined in happy union, his secular and religious duties, amid the horrors of a nocturnal shipwreck, tossing in the Adriatick gulph, and wishing anxiously for day, did not employ the first moments of returning light, in the cares of navigation, but " gave thanks" for his safety, and partook of bread and meat with the mariners.

But without recurring to ancient examples to fortify a duty, in which there is so much pleas­ure to animate its exercise, I will now close by assigning a few reasons, peculiarly binding on A­mericans, for periodical gratitude.

While most of the nations of the elder world, [Page 33] are smarting under the rod of civil or religious oppression, we are leading "quiet and peaceable lives," protected by a mild government. No Inquisitor summons our sectaries to the stake, and in no cell of our mountains has the clank of religious chains yet been heard, No Turkish Sultan abridges life by a nod, and our "exact­ors" derive a revenue to the Union, neither from our windows, nor our hearths. We are emphatically at peace, though Discord has hurl­ed her brand among the nations. Agonized France beholds the lights of her church extin­guished, her "nursing father" and "nursing mother" destroyed, and "her nobles in fetters of iron." The olive has yielded its oil to illumine the lantern, and the grape has been trodden by the faltering feet of the intoxicated soldier. Si­lent are the halls of the sovereign, and a "fox looks out of the window." Contrast this shaded picture, my countrymen, with the scenes of peace and plenty which environ you. Commerce wafts you her wares from afar, and her merchan­dize from the ends of the earth. Husbandry has turned its furrow to vivifying air, and liberal harvests have been reaped from your fields. Your "oxen are strong to labour" and your sheep scatter over the plains. Seeing, therefore, that you have such a goodly heritage undisturbed; be mindful of the good bestowed. To him, who has no father, stretch parental arms, and when the "eye" of the beggar sees, "then let it bless you." When you have thanked the Giver, [Page 34] and imparted from your store to him "that is ready to perish," then with cheerfulness "kill the fatted calf," and "give a sweet savour, and a memorial of fine flour: and make a fat offer­ing."

"LITTLE CHILDREN, KEEP YOURSELVES FROM IDOLS."

THIS precept of the Evangelist, was not in­tended for the nursery. Infants of the largest growth, we know have their rattles and "idols," and the "little children," whom JOHN meant to keep safe, were men and women, who had reached the full measure of their stature, but who, from levity, might prove too attached to objects "earthly" or "devilish."

A learned commentator upon this passage, might here exclaim, O blind Lay Preacher, worthy to be classed with the foolish Galatians, cannot you perceive that your text was design­ed, merely as a warning against the worship of images, set up by the superstition of Pagans, and that the Gentiles were the little children? This is too partial and narrow an explanation. I am willing to suppose that JOHN, like other zealous christians of that age, was anxious to strip each Roman temple, of its false GOD. But the [Page 35] Evangelist well knew that there were idols, the objects of fond adoration, besides brazen or ivo­ry statues, of Jupiter and Mercury. In this enlightened period, when altars are no more, and the smoke of heathen sacrifice no longer as­cends, numerous idols are reverenced; and when the Lay Preacher enumerates their names, all his readers will agree with him, that those, who bow the knee to these modern Baals, are "Little children," always weak and sometimes wicked.

A number of pretty women, of my acquaint­ance, have and will, in spite of my lessons, set up a certain smooth faced idol, on the top of their toilets. They call it a looking glass, and worship it hourly. This is a most pernicious idol; a great cheat of their time, and an artful flatterer of their beauty. They straightway retire, and forget what manner of persons they should prove. They forget the fond husband, and are deaf to the pathetick wailings of the child. They become impatient of every do­mestick duty, and are careful alone, with much care, to be decked in purple, and perfumed with all powders of the merchant.—Little Misses, lis­ten to a friend, break your idol, it is brittle I as­sure you, read instructive books, and sometimes, on a Sunday, sermons, much better ones I mean, than those of the Lay Preacher.

Another species of glass, is a more fashiona­ble idol, than the one recently described. Its name, ye topers, haunting the temple of excess, is drinking glass. In devotion to this bewitch­ing [Page 36] idol, I have seen whole companies so absorb­ed, with elevated eyes, and outstretched hands, that, until I heard execration, I could almost fancy them penitent and pious. Reeling, hic­cupping, and lisping, what nearer resemblance to "little children," who stammer and sprawl, can be discovered than those sottish worshippers of wine, who have all the imbecillity of infancy, without its innocence.

The sons of Sloth might be supposed so sunk­en in sleep, as to be incapable of that degree of activity, necessary for prostration to an idol. But the ingenuity of the sluggard's mind seems to supply, in this instance, the want of bodily exertion. Like those torpid monks, who have contrived, not to court piety abroad, but, to preclude long journeys, keep her semblance in their cell, the sluggard, if I may so express it, has domesticated his idol. He does not even wake to bow himself before it, but, supine in bed, fondly hugs his pillow! Could snorers be rouzed from this dream, and put away this strange God, how, in the beautiful phrase of Dr. YOUNG, "would it bless mankind, and rescue me."

Popularity is a great idol, sought with more assiduity than ever Dagon was by the Philistines. What sacrifices are daily offered it by the seekers of office, and by the demagogues of faction. To the discontented, the desperate, the debtor and the designing, at Boston and Philadelphia, might not a sober man, whether cloathed with the divine authority of the author of my text, [Page 37] or with the crow coloured coat of the Lay Preacher, exclaim, ye little patriots, keep your­selves from this idol! With what wild vagaries does it agitate your plotting heads, and your beating hearts. How your pretended love of your Country, causes you to forget WASHING­TON, guardian and soldier, your first love! How it causes care to sit on your faded cheeks! How it detains you ingloriously in the dirty lanes and Green Draggons of sedition, scribbling saucy toasts, and vamping rash resolves against the treaties and laws of your land, which smiling in peace, seems to scorn your impotency. For­sake, therefore, those French fashions, which sit so awkwardly upon the sedate American. Be no longer the irregular sectaries of revolt, but join the venerable and established Church of gov­ernment.

"DRINK WATERS OUT OF THINE OWN CIS­TERN, AND RUNNING WATERS OUT OF THINE OWN WELL."

SUCH waters will be more exhilirating to an independent spirit, than wine at another man's board.

In our free and independent government, the habits of its citizens should partake of its char­acter. [Page 38] Happily for the dignity and well being of the Americans, that most useful and most numerous class, the landed interest, are signal­ized for deriving their wealth from their own fields, and slaking their thirst at the peculiar spring. Even the jealousy of England has ac­knowledged the unpalatable truth, and GU­THRIE, a Scottish and servile Geographer, has recorded the American farmer's freedom. What order of knighthood can be more noble, than yeomen, laborious and rich? Who has a better title of dominion, than he who is prince of his own pasture, and feeds his fattening flocks, re­joicing under his shepherd sway? The peasants of Poland, and the Turkish slaves of a sultan or vizier may acquire, but they cannot preserve. To them independence is a phantom at which they grasp, and find nothing but chains. Here each man may be the artificer of his own fortune, and when the goodly fabrick is erected, no grip­ing landlord is heard to demand a rent.

To such an exalted point, more sublime than the throne of a prince, it is the binding duty of aspiring and manly youth, to arise.—Indepen­dence is an eagle's wing, which exalts to those elevations, whence we can have a bird's eye view of all that men covet, the brilliant and the bold. But when the meanness of dependence degrades us among LAZARUS and the dogs, to subsist on the falling crumbs from a superior's table, we are little removed from the servile spaniel, and like him, might be collared, and fetch and carry for a master.

[Page 39]He, who in earnest, seeks after independence, shall, like SOLOMON's inquirer after wisdom, have no great travel, for he shall find her sitting at his doors. Nor will she be coy to enter them, but will inhabit there, if honesty and industry are of that house. Let the pilgrim, through this world, disdain to subsist on alms, but refresh himself from his own scrip, and instead of ac­cepting from a great woman at Shunem, or any other lady of quality, a "bed," a "table," a "stool," or a "candlestick," let him rather build, with his own scantlings, a chamber in the wall, and furnish it himself.

Hearken, ye ardent and erect spirits, who full of expectation, enter on the stage of action, heark­en to the warning voice of Prudence, and the Preacher. Be independent in your property.— Lean not against another man, lest you contin­ue not long in one stay. Trust only yourselves, and be not over much trusted by the merchant. When you think you can afford two coats, pur­chase but one. Put a small piece of silver into your purse each day, and you will feel proud to find it swollen at the year's end. Be more wil­ling to lend than to borrow, and be careful, if the borrower call, to have something to lend. Observing these easy rules, you will sleep quiet­ly, undisturbed by the dun, when you go singing by the wayside, not a taylor will present his bill, nor a sheriff pluck you by the sleeve.

"REMOVE SORROW FAR FROM THEE: FOR SORROW HATH KILLED MANY, AND THERE IS NO PROFIT THEREIN.

DRY up your eyes, then, ye mourners, for grief will not restore the friends you have lost, nor abate the edge of misfortune, but as oil and the whetstone to the razor, it will sharpen that which is already too acute, and the bleed­ing heart will shew a still deeper wound. Why will you strive to add one drop to this "vale of tears," which▪ trust me, is already too full, why court the acquaintance of grief, that sorry com­panion, who, sobbing and silent as he journeys with you through the wilderness of this world, multiplies every brake, and adds tenfold horror to the gloom. You have various and real ills to encounter in your sore travail; the climate is vaporous, and you must be sick, men are treach­erous, and you will be deceived, poverty will sometimes start up "like an armed man" before you, and your careful days be like those of an hireling. But be of good cheer, and repeat not in the day of adversity, with erring SOLOMON, that laughter is mad, nor impertinently inquire of Mirth what doeth she, but believe with my predecessor STERNE, that comfortable assertion, worth a million of cold homilies, that every time we smile, and still more every time we laugh, it adds something to the fragment of life.

No profit therein: No verily; the man of sor­row, [Page 41] who, with sullen AHAB, refuses to eat bread, and changes his time for tears, is engaged in one of the most barren and least lucrative employ­ments, you can conceive. Sighs I have always considered as the very canker of the heart, and sobs the grand epitomizers of existence. Child of melancholly! If sorrow hath killed many, and there is no profit therein, banish it from thy shades, for why, in the pathetick language of Ec­clesiastes, shouldst thou die before thy time?

But who are those fair forms, the one with folded arms, and the other with bounding step, ministering, O kindly handmaids, at the bed­side of the Philosopher. I see his pallid cheek already flush, I hear his voice utter a bolder tone, wrinkles are no more seen on his brow, and not a solitary tear traces a lonely way down his cheek, for Patience and Mirth are before him. At their salutary approach, the troop of cares, the family of pain fly disconsolate, and free the vacant heart, from their torturing sway. Gentle and benignant spirits, meekest Patience, and chirping Mirth, whether my cottage is un­roofed by the storm, or my couch thorned by disease, whether friends grow lukewarm, or lov­ers be put far away, let your gay forms appear and the load of life will no more be irksome. For well I know your pleasing arts, I well re­member your numerous topicks of consolation, your musick, your song, your carelessness, Mirth, and Patience, your philosophy and resignation. Sorrow, as the wise son of SIRACH tells us, may [Page 42] kill many, but ye can make alive: Come then to the unfortunate, and let the adverse hour be your favorite hour of visitation.

"WHAT AILETH THEE?"

TO what countless sick people might this question be proposed, and yet not one of the number be really ill, in the medical sense of the word. But there exists, in some individuals an ill habit of mind, a sickness of the heart, a lame­ness of spirit, diseases more difficult to cure than cancer, fever or gout. A good natured patient, swallowing his Physician's prescription, may be­come free of a sick room, and walk at large with health's reddest roses blooming on his cheek. But a man of morbid anxiety, fretful­ness, ambition, or avarice will send in vain for the healing drug of the Apothecary. His wounds are of so rancorous, festering, incurable nature, they will demand much time to heal, and many medicines to assuage. Though the whole med­ical society should consult, though Turkey should yield all her poppies, and the balm of Gilead trickle from a thousand jars, the cancer of the heart mocks the healing power; and often the fell malady is commensurate with life.

In morning and devious rambles, through [Page 43] lonely pasture, or gloomy wood, far from the clink of Industry's anvil, far from the jocund chorus of Musick's songs, I meet a meagre and moping hypocondriack. His temples do not throb, but they are bound, not with the chaplets of spring, but with a white handkerchief, the flag of head ache and disease. The day is ge­nial, for it is one of the mildest in May, but doub­led and trebled stockings on his legs, thick waist-coats closely buttoned over the breast, and a pon­derous great coat, enveloping the man, attest the nature and magnitude of his fears. He shivers at a blast, impregnated with flowers, and when all nature is warm, he dreads taking cold. What a disease, and what stubborn symptoms, which acknowledge no cause! I have a right to say "no cause," for well I know the fate and for­tune of this splenetick. The first is happy, and the other ample. Blest with birth, with talents, with family, with favor, have not I a privilege to inquire of him with more than common curi­osity what aileth thee, why is thy brilliant spirit cast down, and why is thy generous soul troub­led?

What aileth thee, O Lawyer, that, after hav­ing drawn ten thousand pounds from the purses of thy cajoled clients, thou still must play thy saving and cheating game. In thy old age, when thou seest in thy coffers the rewards of thy dark and spider like industry, canst thou still be un­satisfied, and wish to make more writs against in­nocent defendants? What is thy object? [Page 44] Is it wealth? You have a fortune. Is it rep­utation? What fame is it to bellow in support of thy declarations, which will soon be forgotten with the causes they supported. Believe me, you had better write one page of history, couple two feeble lines of rhyme, or utter one moment's melodious breath, than to defend right and wrong as you do, without discrimination. For shame; is it not enough to have the silly vanity of tick­ling rural jurors' ears in your youth, but you must confound them in your middle age, and persevere in duping them in the decline of life. Hasten and make amends; the night of repen­tance is coming on, and it will be a night of thick and Egyptian darkness to thee!

"COME MY BELOVED, LET US GO FORTH INTO THE FIELD; LET US LODGE IN THE VIL­LAGES."

THE hope of gain, and the love of society have now, for centuries, incited men, to risque many inconveniences, for the sake of con­gregating in cities. The simple would natural­ly conclude that where there was "much peo­ple" there would be much jollity. Desperate adventurers, bringing their craft to market would have nothing to lose, and every thing to [Page 45] gain in the throng. Ambition would find in every street, a ladder lofty enough to reach the extent of many a project; and Avarice could find no place more convenient to drive a bar­gain; than a frequented coffee house or an ob­scure alley. Schemes of wealth and aggrandize­ment, or pleasure, thus operating upon hope, the busiest and most sanguine passion, should we wonder to mark flocks of rovers, eager and upon the wing, expecting by a flight from the country to fly from themselves?

But wisely has the wise man said, "Better is a handful with quietness, than both hands full, with travail and vexation of spirit." Tranquility chooses the country for her favorite residence, and should you inquire for the peaceable per­sonage in town, every cit would tell you he did not know her, and that she must be some out­landish person. In cities I grant there are many agitations, which are dignified by the name of pleasure, but they are a spurious brood, and fe­licity would not call them her own. The streams of pleasure in cities are like their common sew­ers: They are turbid, they are full of taint. He who quaffs liberally must soon be either sick or drunk; and such morbid influence have they on the brain, that men go from them, like the apostle's gazer in the glass, "not knowing what manner of person, they were."

They who wish never to be cloyed, to respire with freedom, to enjoy the pleasure of reading and reflection, and to sleep sweetly, must go forth [Page 46] into the field, and lodge in villages. Allowing that there are some genuine delights in the thronged town, yet they tread too fast on each other, and weary by constant succession. A man will pray sometimes no less fervently for a respite from pleasure, than in a fit of the gout, for a res­pite from pain. The pleasures of the country, pure, simple, not dazzling, not boistrous, will gently stir the stream of life: A stream which passion should not be suffered to vex into whirl­pool, nor be "creamed over and mantled" by the stagnation of sloth. To saunter along the banks of the brook, and allure the trout from his recess, to crop the fantastick flowers of May, or the strawberries of June, to climb the solemn mountain, or loiter in the valley's shade, are cheap and real pleasures, make no man a crimi­nal, and leave no sting behind.

Such is the influence of the atmosphere upon the human body, that even robust constitutions are sensible of the changes of the air, and invalids are "tremblingly alive" to them. A fluid, that whether we are sheltered at home, or exposed abroad, we are obliged perpetually to dabble in, we should attempt to find in the utmost purity. But in great towns, on the margin of the main, reeking with the putrefaction of its shores: In cities whose streets are defiled with frequent feet, and scorched by the dogstar, where every tenth house is a hospital, it is not air which the sallow inhabitants breathe, but "a mass of offen­sive things." Let the chain which binds wil­ling [Page 47] prisoners to the crowd be broken, let them "go forth to the field," and if the easy play of their lungs, and alertness of limbs; if the light slumber and the red cheek will not convince them; whence the mighty change in their health has proceeded, they deserve to die soon, and in some dirty lane, as a punishment for their incredu­lity.

Dissipation being the characteristick of cities, to travel its round will require so much time that none will be left to cultivate the under­standing or mend the heart. Whatever some indolent fine ladies and fine gentlemen may sup­pose, we were not sent into this world merely to go to assemblies, to saunter at shops, to purchase of milliners or undergo the three hours operation of a barber. He, who wishes to read verses, or write them, he who means to instruct others, or commune with himself, must seek the retirement of the "field" and the "village." In the city, protracted dinners and midnight revel, will murder half, and more than the day, and the long repose of the morning will be necessary to repair the wasted spirit. In solitude, as there are few incidents to enchain the mind, and few excesses to debase it, the student will bring a wil­ling intellect to the complicated talk, and from a pen put to a rural desk, all difficulty and hindrance will vanish away. He who in city, and broken slumbers, has a thousand times turn­ed his pillow and himself, and, like SHAKE­SPEARE's king, has muttered, "O partial sleep, [Page 48] how have I frighted thee," will find that if he would sleep soundly he must "lodge in the vil­lage." That exercise which in the country, is usually taken in the day, will induce that lassi­tude ever accompanied by delicious repose at night. He may be assured that at the close of the day, the hamlet is still; no lumbering carts or chariots will banish his pleasant dreams, no out­cry of midnight murder chill his palpitating heart. No noise will strike his ear, but the dis­tant waterfall, and no fires glitter in his eye, but the innoxious one of the lucid insect of the meadows. At this genial period, when every June rose is broad blown, and the garniture of the fields is of the greenest hue, the emigrant from town, may, perhaps, find some amusement not inferior to gambling all night, tracing dusty streets or visiting the sagacious dog. He will acknowledge the flavour of our strawberry equal to his pine apple, and the notes of the robin, and wren "of little quill," may sooth him as much and sound as sweet as those of the song-stress of the theatre.

"MY HEAD, MY HEAD."

THIS is an exclamation, which Authors may make with as much propriety as the son of the Shunammite.

[Page 49]Bitter complaints have been uttered by Saints of yore, against that lawless member the tongue. But it has fared with the engine of speech, as with any other meer tool, it has frequently suf­fered for the faults of its principles. The tongue is an active agent, but quite harmless, unless set in motion, or instigated to evil by the head.

When JOB had been maltreated by some Jacobin, of Uz perhaps, who wished for a rev­olution in favour of some insinuating democrat, the wish of JOB, "O that my enemy had writ­ten a book," though apparently enigmatical, is one of the most pertinent and least absurd wishes recorded in history.

Profound knowledge of the world, taught him not to pray that his foe, by some sudden impulse, or some sanguinary passion, might render himself obnoxious to justice. He knew, that in mercy's code, there was perpetu­ally a saving clause in favour of the errors of the heart, but that for the deliberate effusions of the head there was no proviso. He knew, that to pronounce his enemy a knave, though it might put the wary Jews on their guard, when he prof­fered a pledge, or proposed a bargain, would a­mong an usurious tribe, noted for the spirit of trade, render him an object of respect, rather than of contempt. The irritated man of Uz, therefore, with singular sagacity, implores that he might write a book. The vanity of Authorship, JOB probably argued, will induce him to pub­lish ideas, crude or absurd, and criticizing Uz­zites [Page 50] will then ridicule the fool. His neglected volume, not even "way faring men" shall pe­ruse; and its leaves shall curl the hair, or cool the "crisping pins," of the oriental maid­ens.

From the above history of what probably passed in JOB's mind it will appear, that it was his decided opinion nothing could be so in­jurious to his enemy as a bad head, if its owner should hazard a publick exposure of its thoughts. So few heads are capable of framing useful books, that the chance was that a foolish one would be produced by that author, who, in opposition to all the East, was presumptuous and depraved e­nough to be the avowed "enemy" of a popular citizen. Such an arrogant scribbler would ei­ther commit himself by dogmatical assertion, or alarm others by libertine argument, his book would be too trite for the wise, or too obscure for the simple.

THOMAS PAINE, could he survey that nume­rous herd, transformed from credulous christians to infidels, by his "Age of Reason," and from good subjects to revolters, by his "Common Sense," would sigh for the mischief he had wrought, and even at the ninth hour, before he was drunken, would exclaim, "my head, my head."

Were not the subject almost too serious to allow the sportive stile, we might indulge, and hint that some of the Legislators of France, sen­sible of the many evils of heads, invented a sum­mary [Page 51] mode of lopping those excrescencies. King, noble and priest, have been visited by a malady, similar to that, which vexed the Shunammite's son, and each has ascended a sanguinary scaffold, ejaculating "my head, my head."

Daring and impudent as it may appear in this levelling age, to avow respect for birth or talents, I confess, as a little of the aristocratical leaven has possibly leavened the whole lump, that my notions on this subject are very old fashioned. My own head is so weak, that I can­not help fancying some difference, in the capac­ity of those of other men. I shall not, therefore, say a word to the prejudice of the ancient and honourable families of Longheads or Wiseheads, but shall wish them a quiet repose on their an­cient foundations, and that neither a Frenchman nor a Virginian should abridge their immunities, nor disturb their possession. For the head of genius, whose ancestry can be traced beyond William the Conqueror, and whose talents are so confessedly brilliant, I feel peculiarly solicitous. I at first, thought of wishing it a place in the museum of Cambridge, but am apprehensive lest it should sustain a rude kick from some of the animals of the place, or have its fine features marred by the fogginess of the atmosphere. I therefore consign it to the charge of PHILENIA, and already behold it crowned with chaplets of immortal verdure.

"GO THY WAY, EAT THY BREAD WITH JOY, AND DRINK THY WINE WITH A MERRY HEART."

AND where is the sullen mortal, who would refuse to obey so pleasant an injunction as this, coming too on the authority of SOLOMON?

However, as this doctrine at first view, seems to flatter the indulgence of the passions, and therefore to proceed with an ill grace from a moral teacher, let us look narrowly into SOLO­MON's system, and endeavor that wisdom may be justified of her children.

In one of the most interesting and amusing Journals that we find in the Bible, SOLOMON has narrated to us the hopes and fears, which agitated his busy life. Born a monarch he could exercise supreme power, and a courtier of the muses he acquired the highest wisdom His city was magnificent, his subjects loyal, com­merce wafted him all that was rare from Sidon, and the decks of Tarshish ships glittered with the pageantry of its peacocks. In a situation so favorable to enjoyment, it was natural that he should withhold his heart from no joy, and that the luxury of the East should excite him to re­fine on pleasure. From his love of letters, his first indulgencies were of course mental. He conned the pithy sayings of Orientals, and fa­tigued his faculties with the scholastick jargon of many a Rabbi. But soon discovering that [Page 53] he was directing his thoughts through a track­less maze, that if such abstruse disquisitions were too eagerly pursued, wisdom would turn into folly and too much learning make him mad, he resolved to descend from the pinnacle of speculation, and mix with men in the high­way of life. We then hear of his agricultural experiments, the cares of a numerous household, and his publick works. Through the dusty de­sarts of Palestine, he probably conveyed distant water to thirsty subjects, and overarched the brook Cedron with numerous bridges. But the restless Prince, when the labors of the day were past, and he communed with his own heart in the inner chamber of the palace found, in re­flection's sober hour, that this was a sore travail and vexation of spirit. At length, after nume­rous experiments on happiness, he drew a for­mal comparison between the various situations in life. After stating the accompt of human hope and disappointment, with clerical accuracy, that Folly has a funeral splendid as that of the wise, that the goods of fortune are perishable, and though attained by industry may probably descend to an Idler, that the reign of novelty was past, and every object wore the uniform of sameness, he concludes, I think philosophically, by arguing against anxiety and enjoining a mod­erate participation of festal joys.

From various passages, interspersed through­out the volume of our belief, I am pesuaded that christianity was designed to be a cheerful system. [Page 54] Miserable was the perversion of its precepts by those in early time, who believed that none could prove sincere votaries, but the moping and the austere. It is wonderful that primitive Piety, who must be supposed to hold the Bible constantly in her hand, should not discern the numerous texts enjoined to sanctify the moder­ate use of the good things of this world. Not to be too anxious, and to rejoice evermore are particular precepts of the New Testament. I hope I shall not be accused of thinking like cer­tain philosophers of the sect of the Epicureans, when I frankly acknowledge that I can see no reason to forbid the straitest of our religion, eat­ing a dinner with sweet herbs instead of the bit­ter ones of the passover. Should such a feast of joy provoke thirst, I shall not deem it an infrac­tion of gospel rules, to indulge him with a little wine. The vineyards of Engedi are no more, but those of France remain, and if a Jewish law­giver could "tie his colt to the vine, and dip his mantle in the blood of the grape," why may not the sober glass be tinged, and why were grapes given us, unless to be crushed?

"HATE NOT LABORIOUS WORK, NEITHER HUS­BANDRY."

THE snow beginning now ^* to trickle fast from the hills, and spots of green sward to appear, the provident husbandman, refreshed by the rest of winter, thinks it time to leave the af­ternoon mug of cyder unfinished, and prepare for the labours of spring. But as many, attach­ed to ease and the fireside, are unwilling to put their hands to the plough, and wishing, in the common phrase of our country, that six weeks sledding in March, may put off the evil day of furrowing the fields, I will endeavour to con­vince them that nothing is so laborious, as hav­ing nothing to do.

If a fretful farmer, who in some rainy day, thinks no employment is so toilsome as that which he exercises, will cast his eyes upon the various idlers, sauntering along, with pale cheeks and gouty limbs, from Dan to Beersheba, he will be convinced that mowing in July, and haling wood in winter, are less fatiguing than pleasure's race. When an inquisitive being asks why there is so much vice and misery in this world, I con­ceive no answer would be more pertinent, than because the vicious and miserable, have, at some period of their lives, been haters of laborious work, and husbandry.

What is it but this aversion to labor, and a fantastick wish to be free from care, that urges [Page 56] so many to exchange wheat for whisky, and their money for a game of cards? Why do such numbers beg at rich men's doors? Why are so many rheumatick limbs propped by crutches and staves? Why does the attorney commence such frequent suits for the innkeeper? And, Why are the debtor's rooms in a jail crowded? If the hoe, the spade and the field could speak, they would say, because men hearken to the whispers of fancy, and forsake us, their best allies in life's warfare.

Unless the sower goeth forth to sow, he cannot expect sixty or an hundred fold. Unless men sometimes love laborious work and husbandry, they will not reckon much fine gold, nor be eagerly inquired after in the gate. The ages of miracles are past, and I know not whether man has a right to expect that Providence will inter­pose particularly in his favor, and give him bread, if he will not be at the pains to leaven it.

That ancient adjudication, which sentenced Adam to eat bread in the sweat of his brow, has been harshly denominated a curse, by unthink­ing christians. But it is demonstrable that the necessity for labor is one of the highest blessings of life, and without this necessity, other blessings would lose half their value. The ancient poets, delighting in fiction, have amused themselves and credulous readers, with a gorgeous descrip­tion of the golden age. An age, which accord­ing to poetical chronolgy, existed prior to the primal curse. In this blest period, no coulter [Page 57] pierced earth's surface, honey distilled from oaks, and wine and milk gurgled spontaneously from springs. This is undoubtedly a vision of the night. But if it had been realized, and men, like the austere governor in the gospel, could have reaped where they had not sown, and gath­ered where they had not strewed; such a state of inaction would produce an extreme of weari­ness more intolerable than the drudgery of the field. A profound observer has remarked, that if all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work; and if we mark the men of pleasure, whom the legacy, or the partiality of parents, has enriched, we shall discover the truth of the observation. Who is so anxious, who loses so much rest, who so worketh with his hands, as the nocturnal gamester? What perils, what storms, what fa­tigue the drunkard encounters, navigating the raging ocean of wine; yet it is these, who make delight a trade, and what should be the occa­sional relaxation, the business of life. For my­self, I cannot help thinking, that cutting tender grass is more easy than cutting unlucky cards; that the laborer with a corn basket on his shoul­der, is less burdened than the tipler with the load of his stomach, and that the flaxen head plough­boy, tracing the straight and undeviating fur­row, has a lighter task to fulfil than he who be­wilders himself in the mazes of wantonness, and seeks those daughters of Zion, who walk with stretched forth necks.

[Page 58]Go, then happy husbandmen, with alacrity to laborious work. Trust me, ye sleep sounder than him who advises you, and who is destined to have no acres to till, but who, with throbbing temples toils over the weekly sermon. I gaze with pleasure, at your bursting barns, your well ordered cottages and your fruitful fields. I see, that in consequence of your labor, you are healthful and happy. While your valuable exertions continue, your country will never grieve. Continue to venerate the plough and to feed the ox, and you will turn up gold with the one, and draw to your dwellings most fine gold with the other.

"THERE IS A LION IN THE STREETS."

TRUST me, my readers, that there will be Lions in your houses too, if you listen too credulously to indolence and fear.

Enterprize and action, are the sinews of suc­cess in business, and greatness in character. The value of a man is not to be estimated by the possession of talents, but by their use. He, who can speak or write, or labor, and is neither an orator, nor an author, nor a husbandmam, I pity from my soul; and regret that though he has courage, yet is afraid of the Lion.

[Page 59]SLOTH is one of the most timid personages I know; she haunts the pillow, and she invites to the tavern. A young student wakes at five— The morning is frosty, but though Duty com­mands to rise, Sloth whispers "there is a Lion in the streets."

Many sots of my acquaintance would be more sober than my Deacon, were they not driven to drams by harsh creditors and scolding wives. Creditors that insist upon present pay, and wives of clamorous tongue, are undoubtedly ugly and growling Lions.

Spleen, or, as she is now generally called, Hypo, is a lady of most delicate nerves, and trembles at the very name of Lions. Like some old women, who are afraid that they may be shot, by a gun not loaded, Spleen, if assured that there was no Lion existing, but in the desarts of Africa—would be positive that she heard one growl in the streets.

I know a melancholly man, who turns pale, if only a flock of harmless sheep bleat as they pass his door; his terrified fancy changes them into Lions. He inherits from healthy ancestors a robust constitution, eats roast beef with a relish, and empties his daily decanter; but apprehen­sions of the gout and apoplexy constantly haunt him in the shape of Lions.

Many honest people, who are unreasonably averse to wild beasts, are afraid that the world they inhabit will not continue a week. About a hundred years ago, those, who are "full of no­tions," [Page 60] declared that the globe would be burnt, by an incendiary comet: They even felt them­selves scorched by its tail; and many a white handkerchief was soiled, by wiping anxious brows But the globe still rolls merrily round, neither roasted nor broiled by a comet's fire; and we may laughingly declare that the comet gaz­ers saw a Lion in the sky, as well as in the streets.

In the middle of July, tired of composing my sermons, I walked into the meadows, and search­ed anxiously for shade. I saw a laborer with a wooden bottle at his mouth, and but little hay made at his side; his useless scythe hung dang­ling from the limb of an elm.—He could not mow, for his arms were relaxed by rum, and he saw a Lion in the grass.

I am, or think myself an invalid, and have a whim, the offspring of indolence, that some seasons are more favorable to composition, than others. I had taken it into my head that this week was too cloudy to write, with clearness, and meant, like some ordained Parsons, to vamp an old sermon. But I felt shame busy, with her red pencil, at my cheek, and became persuaded that there was no Lion in the streets, which led to the office of my Printer. I applied gaily to my task; and endeavoured to convince my readers that they may work in any street, without inju­ry from THE LION.

"I PERCEIVE THAT IN ALL THINGS YE ARE TOO SUPERSTITIOUS."

SUPERSTITION is not confined to relig­ious belief: The apostle Paul employed it in its broadest sense, and the Lay Preacher well knowing the extent of its influence, proceeds to exemplify how men of America, as well as of "Athens," may be in all things, too supersti­tious.

Having no farm, but only a small garden, I cannot be stiled Husbandman, the most honor­able of titles, and therefore know but little of Agriculture. But when I see a strip of ground, with here and there a spire of very luxuriant grass, growing on its edge, and wheat in the middle, like JOSEPH'S seven ears of corn, "blasted and thin," I know that the owner dares not think for himself. Should you ask him why he sows grain, instead of planting the potatoe, he tells you "his father and grandfather before him did so." Here my readers, is an instance of a "superstitious" farmer; the example, even of parents, will not justify folly, and my neighbor, Lawyer SUMMONS, will tell you that a bad custom should be abolished. The yeoman who manages a farm erroneously, and continues su­perstitiously to sow by the way side, because his father did, will soon have nothing but an empty garner for the officer to attach.

When a country physician talks about spe­cificks [Page 62] to "sweeten the blood," and points his lancet to the collapsed vein of a coughing and consumptive patient, whom he drenches with milk instead of beef juice, I shudder for the mea­gre wretch, burnt by a hectick, and drained by a quack. I compare him to a state criminal in England, sentenced, not only to be hanged, but drawn and quartered, and regret that a useful member of society is murdered by a mode of practice in all things too superstitious.

A fashionable man, as the ladies call him, is more superstitious than those Indians who wor­ship the Devil. A fashionable man, who wears silk hose in winter, and a thick pudding under his chin in summer, who risques a crick in his neck, by wearing the cape of his coat on his shoulders, and whose dangling knee strings are social with every ragged nail they meet, is in ev­ery part and parcel of his dress too supersti­tious.

A young woman, who thinks that frankness in speech is a vice of the heart, who laboriously shuns meeting the eyes of man, as though, like a black snake, he would first charm—and then devour her; who never calls breeches by their right name, and scolds two hours when a case of bastardy is mentioned, I am certain would make a poor and profligate wife, being in all things too prudish and superstitious.

No people under the sun enjoy such rational liberty as the Americans, protected by a govern­ment mild and amiable. The man who ac­quired [Page 63] this fair inheritance by his sword, now maintains it by his prudence.—All of my curi­ous readers have heard something of his character, all my grateful readers reverence it. Even the old women of my village, after reading his man­ly and moral speeches, lay down their spectacles, and declare "this WASHINGTON a clever crea­ture." Now could credulity suppose that there could be found a solitary grumbler, in all things so weakly superstitious and so wickedly ungrate­ful, as to affirm that our government was tyran­nical and its President ambitious? But shame to the "tardy gratitude of base mankind," not only individuals but "clubs" and "societies" of Americans, "seeing that by him we enjoy great quietness" strive to calumniate our chief gover­nour, to turmoil his government and to cause us, in all political cases to be too superstitious.

"THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD PASSETH A­WAY."

MORE quickly in the Preacher's opinion, and in the milliner's practice than the remembrance of a guest, that tarrieth but an hour.

Those slaves to the mode, who from leisure and fortune, are most capable of resorting to [Page 64] "Vanity Fair," to learn and ape the fashions of this world, have a harder task than the porter in town, or the haymaker in the country. A new coat every month, and a vest, of a different pat­tern, every hour, are hardly sufficient, in the o­pinion of a jury of beaus, to excuse a man from presentment for high treason against the law of taste.

Customs, the lawyers affirm, to have validity, must be equally old and certain. Customs, which I copy, says the coxcomb, must be as changeable, as the silk gown, or the temper, of a mistress.

St. Paul, who I believe never visited Paris, appears rather hostile to fashion's freaks▪ al­though, in most respects, he was of a very com­plying character. In one of his epistles, he makes particular mention of the Ladies, and their dress, but is so uncouth and austere, as to allow them only three suits, which he calls by the barbarous names of shamefacedness, sobrie­ty, and good works. These uncourtly terms, I [...] asked a woman of fashion to define. With the volubility of her sex, she first railed at poor PAUL, for presuming to dictate in dress, and then told me that they meant linseywoolsey and grogram, flimsy manufactures, fit for none but Jewish chambermaids to wear.

If one of the patriarchs could get up out of his grave, and survey the chins of his descend­ants, he would not fail to conclude, that the race of man was annihilated by another deluge, and [Page 65] that the daughters of EVE had the exclusive right to the globe. The fashion of this world regulates our persons no less than our garb. Fashion cherishes a length of hair, at one time, and snips it, at another. An antediluvian in his tent would encourage his beard to sweep his breast. A modern coxcomb, at his toilet, will pay a barber to keep the beard shaven. In the days of CROMWELL, and puritanism, fashion set­tled the length of countenance, as well as the width of conscience. None but long visaged penitents could be numbered among the elect. In the merry days of CHARLES the second, and the profligate, behold the opposite extreme; the features of levity contracted by laughter, and all faces as short as the Spectator's. We read in antient British history, that King RICHARD and his courtiers chained their shoes to their knees; whoever marks a modern fine gentleman trip­ping along the street, will discern that his shoe chain is attached to the instep, and has dwindled from ponderous silver, or gold, to airy black ribband. The history of whiskers has been so copiously [...] by my brother parson, STERNE, that I am almost excused from anoth­er paragraph. But [...] have had their fashions, and suddenly have they passed away. The gallants in SHAKESPEARE's days, used to consider them as ornaments of the cheek, and "by my mustachois," has been the courtly oath of a Spanish gentleman. Whiskers were then unaccountably worn, not as the pink of taste, [Page 66] but as the insignia of valour, and degraded by German corporals and hussars, into scarecrows to terrify the enemy. This is not the last of whisker revolutions. Within few years, a smirking race, called, in fashion's vocabulary, " Tippys," reassumed whiskers, and their pallied cheeks, thus accoutred, exhibited a surprising compound of ghastliness and effeminacy. But the scythe of the mode, at length, has near­ly swept these superfluous hairs away from the face, and what weed will next grow there, must be left to some future scoffer against custom to record.

When I began this sermon upon the vicissi­tudes and vanity of fashion, I marked down sketches of the alterations in female dress, as a distinct topick, on which I should enlarge, as became a preacher. But this was too vast an undertaking for a writer so concise as myself. Besides, the limits of my discourses are too nar­row for such an immeasurable theme. Far from being compressed into a single column, the things which should be written, concerning the shop and box of the milliner, would over­flow a volume more ample than RIDGLEY's body of divinity, or the everlasting paraphrase of GILL. For the time would fail me, and it absolutely fatigued the long winded ISAIAH, to tell of the changeable suits of a woman, of the "hoods," the "veils," the "mantles," and "wimples," the "bonnets," the "head bands" and the "round tires," which the prophet adds, [Page 67] with a degree of wit, you would not expect from his character, were "like the moon," incessantly varying like that planet. The Ladies are the leg­islators of fashion, and their laws are so numerous and so often repealed, it is presumption to attempt a digest. But instead of exercising their ingenuity upon caps and gowns, the mode of which passeth away, would they study more durable graces, and make the white robe of neatness, candour and modesty, fashionable, they may be assured it is of such admirable texture, that, like certain old brocades, it will not only look, but wear well, and be in season all the year.

"THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD PASSETH A­WAY."

AS I am only a Lay Preacher, it must not be expected that I should always exhibit that accuracy of sermonizing, which character­izes the settled Pastor. But having observed in the course of a long and regular attendance of publick worship, that Divines are in the habit of dividing their matter, and of adjourning, some­times, the morning exhortation till after dinner, I thought it expedient, when I selected the fruit­ful theme of last week's meditation, to reserve part of its topicks till now. For, during the [Page 68] process of critically examining my subject in all lights, I found that fashon regulated speculation no less than practice, and that opinions, as well as dresses had their times and seasons. As we are told by a profound reasoner, that as there is but one sun in the natural, so there can be but one truth in the intellectual world, an abstract met­aphysician, in his cell, would suppose that, by this time, that one truth was discovered, and hence necessarily induced uniformity of thinking. But this is a mere reverie of a novice in the his­tory of man. In theology, in the healing art, in politicks, in the fine arts, and in polite litera­ture, in whatever interests, in whatever amuses our species, perpetual vicissitudes occur, and what is supposed to be settled by one party at one time, is unhinged by different theories at another.

In the infancy of the colony at Plymouth, and at the erection of the Saybrook platform, our emigrant forefathers, rejected, with loathing, the fat luxury of LUTHER, and starved them­selves on the mean fare of CALVIN. They were doubtful even of scriptural truth if it had issued from the Clarendon Press, and would not read the sermon on the mount to edification, unless imprinted in a Bible at Geneva. WIL­LARD's body of divinity was their law and testi­mony, and reprobate was that sinner, who would adventure to read and practice a more gentle and generous system. But such heavy and clanking fetters of the mind, were too irksome to [Page 69] be long worn patiently by fretful scepticks, and infant Catholicism in its cradle at length ventur­ed innovation. Good works were sometimes associated with implicit faith, and the piety of our primitive christians was not always horror struck at the union. In process of time the reign of rigor declined, and now it may be said the high prerogative of superstition has become as nugatory as kingly power in France. For, a new dictator in divinity who knew not CALVIN arose, and CHAUNCY considering brimstone as a Scottish, or an old wive's fable, proclaimed salva­tion to all men, and insisted that a profligate should not be eternally singed for his sins. HUME and BOLINGBROKE, with elegance and elabora­tion, but with the darkest sophistry, and BOULANGER, an audacious Frenchman, in his "Christianity unveiled," have presumptuously attempted to sap the christian's fortress, and now, to represent the son of MARY as a mere man, and now as an imposter. These writings have induced flimsy opinions, called, from their na­ture, Deistical, to predominate, and their pro­fessors, far from consulting the editions, either of England or Geneva, will inspect no Bible. Per­haps the accurate reader will pronounce my e­numeration incomplete, unless I notice that second edition of Tom Thumb's folio, called "The Age of Reason." But as this, in mechanick's phrase, is but a bungling vamp of obsolete infi­delity, written by a drunken author, rarely quoted, except by the lowest vulgar, and then in [Page 70] the lisping accents of intoxication, I will not condescend to an analysis, but terminate this head of my discourse with the warmest wishes, that, in spite of jarring opinions, gospel charity and benevolence, may be everlastingly fashiona­ble, and that men will not expect a more excel­lent mode from the new fangled looms of PAINE and of Paris.

Physick has experiened more revolutions than Poland, or even France, since the Capets are no more. BOERHAAVE has prescribed at Ley­den, what BROWN would reject at Edinburgh. Gout must be pampered according to one Phy­sician, and starved by another. The small pox, like SANCHO PANZA, is sometimes blanketed in­to submission, and sometimes every wintry wind, must be invoked to blow the infection away. Dr. CHEYNE insists that his patients shall quaff a perpetual bowl of milk, while a more jolly physician directs as perpetual and much ruddier draughts. LE SAGE's SANGRADO drained ev­ery vein, and now every vein must be inflated like a bladder. CULLEN departed from BOER­HAAVE, BROWN has exposed and abjured the heresy of CULLEN, and probably by this time some European projecter has started a new the­ory to the utter destruction of the old.

A Logician, considering the two subjects as equally variable, would infallibly class weather­cocks and politicks together. We behold vast empires sometimes governed by a solitary wom­an—and petty states headed by a mob of rulers. [Page 71] Kings, once ranked with Gods, are suddenly and capriciously degraded among felons. Govern­ment, as a nervous writer expresses it, is some­times scandalously relaxed, and then violently stretched beyond its tone. The Corinthian cap­ital of society, laboriously erected by aristocrati­cal artists, is prostrated by popular fury in an hour. In our own Country, political modes are perpetually fluctuating. Prior to the formation of French friendship, that people, their religion, and their politicks were equally detested. The Pope was Antichrist, the French King his high Steward, the government of France was the archtype of Turkish despotism, and the nation viewed as a motley col­lection of coxcombs and slaves. Mark the in­stant operation of a single defeat, on the whole political sense of America! A captured BUR­GOYNE could metamorphose an arbitrary LEWIS into the friend, the patron of republicans. But the love towards LEWIS soon waxed cold, and MARAT had his proselytes here as well as at Paris.

Very suddenly have most of our political fashions past away. Britain has been called a mother, a hag, a sister or a fiend. Our rulers are perpetually, wrangling concerning the garb of government. Some, from Geneva or Vir­ginia, affect the broad mantle of republicanism, which covers a multitude of sins. Others prefer French manufacture of the Paris cut. A few, perhaps, wish to import materials from England, [Page 72] but there is a good warm well made, easy gar­ment, made to fit any one, called Federalism, which the Lay Preacher actually prefers to his canonicals, and prays may be constantly worn, and an unchangeable mode.

"ISSACHAR IS A STRONG ASS."

—WILLING to carry any burdens through thick and thin; the dirtiest roads the most formidable obstructions, the "hill difficulty" or the "valley of humiliation," are all the same to the "strong asses" of this world.

On my return from a visit to a brother par­son, I stopped at an inn for refreshment, and an African hostler held my stirrup for a weary limb to dismount. His hat was under his arm, his body bent to more than a curve, and his looks of cringing obsequiousness, for a moment angered me, not at him, for I saw slave in the furrows of his cheek, but at the first gold coast navigators who thus dared to change humanity into a "strong ass."—Not slaves alone are thus meanly subservient, I observed to myself. I know some in that predicament who are free— Is it possible? How free? Why they have the keys to their chamber—they go like the winds, [Page 73] where they list—they are not in the custody of the officer—But avarice sends them on vile er­rands, and to fetch or carry gold they "couch down," like Issachar the "strong ass."

I sometimes see a little mercenary attorney "couching down" at the bar, taxing his bill of cost, and pointing to the careless client that he has forgotten "one shilling more for this writ." I hear him argue, not with ingenuity, not with eloquence, for then I should do him homage, but by rote; croaking sentences from the statute book, and hesitating law from his "puddled" memory. I hear him scold a trembling culprit, as a toothless old woman scolds a wayward child; a culprit, for the first time, whose only offence is cutting a twig from the wayside tree. But this urchin avenger of publick wrongs, holds his dogs eared law in one hand, and rudely pushes from him " sweet mercy" with the other. His bray, his stupidity, his callousness are all derived from the house of "ISSACHAR," and when I see him with his green bag, moiling for the last dollar of the entangled client, verily I see as "strong" an "ass" as the Patriarch did, when he gazed at the most sluggish of his children.

On some of those days, when I do not preach myself, I sit down in the body seat of the first meeting house that I find. Occasionally, I am instructed by an ingenious sermon, modelled by a "workman that needeth not to be ashamed," but when the clergyman is corpulent, red faced, and a heavy leaner upon the cushion, when he [Page 74] sounds divinity through his nose, when he cop­ies the huge pages of Dr. GILL, or FLAVEL, and reads them without emphasis, though I can­not discern long ears rising each side of his wig, I am confident that some "strong ass" has mis­taken the pulpit for a stable.

When a candidate for Congress, instead of studying the constitution at home, is constantly in a bar room, with a mug of flip in his hand, courting the suffrages of the populace. When, for the sake of a vote, he resigns his best ground­ed opinions, to slide easily into those of his neighbour. When, like ABSALOM, he stands at the city gate, taking every stranger familiarly by the hand, inquiring his grievances, and hinting that, "if I were a ruler in Israel how soon they would be redressed," the most careless elector may anticipate Virginia politicks, hotter than the sun, battles against the funding system, crude calumny against the President, zeal for French lanterns, and resolutions of democratick clubs, enough to fill both panniers of "a strong ass."

Should I, in a morning's walk or ride, stop for rest at some log house or cottage in my way, and see a scurvy looking fellow, smelling strong of nauseous drugs, poking frequently into old saddle bags for phials, and feeling pulses, which keep [...] with the watch, I should naturally [...] of "ISSACHAR." But should I hear the [...] " white swelling," or " right rose cancer," [...] I was a thousand leagues from the Cape [...] Spain, I should be positive that I [Page 75] heard something bray, and that some Quack was near me in the shape of a "strong ass."

"THE HEART OF THE FOOLISH IS LIKE A CART WHEEL."

IF this be the fact, and the wise man accurate in his similitude, what myriads of wheels, roll in this, our rolling world!

As it is the privilege of Preachers, to para­phrase their text, and extort meanings that will slide easily into the train of their own sentiments; I shall choose to understand the word foolish, as not only intended to indicate weak, but giddy, and unstable men. This definition being grant­ed, and it is not so far fetched, as many, which my fellow labourers, JOHN FLAVEL, and MAT­THEW HENRY, have framed, what greater af­finity can be found between two things, appar­ently unlike, than a hypochondriack writer, and a Cart Wheel? Such a splenetick author as the Lay Preacher, for instance, restless, and whose labors are in regular rotation, moves through the ruts of life, creaking and complaining of obstruc­tions in the way, and when, the daily drudgery is done, is left by the inattention of mankind, without a shelter, or sunk into a slough.

A very ancient moralist, who published his [Page 76] wisdom, in the reign of Queen ELIZABETH, introduces, somewhere in his works, an aged fire, complaining of the clandestine nuptials of his daughter. As the height of his misfortune, the disappointed parent laments, that his dar­ling should espouse a fickle foreigner, and, as it is expressed in the quaint stile of that age, "Tye her fortunes to an extravagant, and wheeling stranger." A romantick adventurer, continu­ally shifting his situation, exposed to the temp­tations, and vices of various regions, and, like the Dove of NOAH, perpetually seeking, and never finding a settlement, must be grossly deficient in that uniformity of character, necessary to the happiness of marriage. Be on your guard, therefore, ye Parents, when your daughters are solicited to wedlock, by those, who are common­ly called unsteady men, lest haply ye find them wheeling. The heart of a husband, that is like a Cart Wheel, will, in some of its unaccountable and wild rotations, be turned away from its duty or affections to the wife.

Advice to women, must be supposed most dis­interested in the Lay Preacher. The reasons are obvious; he has, in a former sermon, hinted that he was full of years, and, moreover, from the gravity, and restraint of his profession, can­not approach, even, the female cheek, but with the salute of a Saint or the kiss of Charity. He, therefore, intreats the daughters of the land, not to confound prudery with virtue, not to follow, with too strict observance, the changes of fashion, [Page 77] nor to be too ambitious of the artifice of coquet­ry, for all these things assimilate a woman to a wheel, whirling at a prodigious rate.

There is more hope of a fool, than of that va­rious creature, commonly called a universal ge­nius. Eager for novelty, and a stranger to per­severance, he goes on from one project to anoth­er, from art to art, and from science to science, round and round like a Cart Wheel. In the younger part of my life, I knew a man, of the a­bove description; I think his name was SCHE­MER. If he happened to hear a veteran Colonel, talk of the siege of Louisbourg, be would buy military books, and dream of drums and trump­ets. In the midst of these warlike preparations, he received a letter, from his brother, a lawyer, informing, "that he had gained his great Land cause, at the last superior court." SCHEMER sold his cartouch box, and read Law for—two days. Jaded with the obscurity of this study, his restless mind demanded something new, and he listened with delight, to the tale of an East-indian Captain, who painted the profits of fac­torship, and the brilliancy of "Barbarick pearl and gold." In short, for to recount all his la­bors, would tire, even the long winded JEREMY TAYLOR, he spent his life in ceaseless changes; he had, at different times, horses saddled for journeys to every part of the continent, and the departure of many an outward bound vessel, was delayed by this projecting passenger. I lived with him a month, and witnessed the variety of [Page 78] his pursuits. He might be found in the morn­ing, busy to invent some short cut to the temple of science, at noon he would be examining the wheels of a watch, and at night, making a mouse trap. His life was the perpetual motion, and his palpitating heart, and whirligig head, were, in very deed, like a Cart Wheel.

"WHY STAND YE HERE ALL THE DAY IDLE?"

HAVING sauntered away a whole week in parochial visitations, the habit of indo­lence grew so strong, that on the morning of publication, my sermon was untouched, and the Deacon and I were lolling with folded arms a­gainst my study wainscoat. The Printer enter­ed the room, asking for my copy; when he saw my paper without a character traced on it, and my study table covered, not with texts, but to­bacco, he sarcastically exclaimed, "Why stand ye here all the day idle?"

Truly, Deacon, I responded, this is a puz­zling question, harder than knotty arithmetick, which tormented my patience at school. Why stand we here all the day idle? Moments of re­laxation are necessary, and we have them in a­bundance, but to stand, yea and to sit, and to loll whole hours and summer days idle, is a priv­ilege [Page 79] which should never be asked by mankind. Let the sloth and the dormouse sleep, but let man be "up and doing." Each has a soldier's task to fulfil, and if neglecting the front of day, we ignobly skulk in the rear, the tour of duty will be unaccomplished, and we shall, sorrowing, hear the voice of some moral centinel crying, "The night is coming wherein no man shall work."

It is almost presumption to attempt sketching even the outlines of Indolence, since SOLOMON, the best character painter in Jerusalem, has drawn a striking likeness of the sluggard, and has shewn what a silly figure the man makes who "stands all the day idle." I have gazed whole hours at this pretty picture, which the wise man exhibits, and am persuaded that it is better worth ninepence of any man's money, than a sight of the Lion, now carrying about in a cage. But as lazy folks will not even read little story books, much less the Bible, I know of no better mode to teach them self knowledge, than by de­signing a modern sluggard, in miniature and hanging it up in the first column of the Wal­pole Paper, which, it is said, even yawners read.

DICK DRONISH lies in bed till eleven o'clock in a May morning. Slip shod, and with one stocking wrong side out, he gapes over his break­fast, which he eats with "unwashen hands," be­cause he can't afford to hire a servant to hold the water bow!.—As his profession requires [Page 80] study, it is his duty to read all the forenoon, but be always sleeps over his book, and never dis­played any vivacity in study, except once, when he threw Dr. FRANKLIN'S works into the fire, for saying that "Time was money." After dinner, which generally employs two hours, he crack nuts like a squirrel, or smokes like a Dutchman, or by a certain process, commonly called whitling, covers his hearth with shreds of pine. At four, you see him exerting all his en­ergies, crossing the street to a dram shop, and loading a s [...] pistol—with brandy. You need not enter DICK's house to become acquainted with the proprietor. You see him through the [...], and know that the rusty hat, [...] supplies the lost pane, belongs to the [...].

[...], but sometimes whole tribes and [...], "stand all the day idle." I [...] through a certain town, [...] I was credibly in­formed, [...] the whole year in a [...] You might hear them sno [...]e as [...] through the streets, and a witty friend observed to me, that there the common forms of salutation ought to be changed, and that two people, when they met, instead of asking each other "How they did," should ask how they slept, or whether they had pleasant dreams! At Clumsy College, where I had my education, Governours and Pupils stood for the most part idle. The Heads [Page 81] of the College were sometimes lifted up, when some braying dunce vociferated his declama­tion, but "the still small voice" of genius rarely interrupted their learned repose. To such a drowsy education, the candid reader of these dis­courses, must attribute the tediousness and insip­idity of the Lay Preacher.

"THEY MADE ME THE KEEPER OF THE VINE­YARDS, BUT MINE OWN VINEYARD HAVE I NOT KEPT."

THIS is the frank confession of SOLOMON, in one of the stanzas of his "Song of Songs."

During some moments when he enjoyed a respite from pleasure, in his voluptuous haram, the wise king might inquire by what strange fa­tality he had been raised to a throne, and pro­nounced wise, when some of his appetites were so grovelling, and some of his actions so foolish. My readers will not, I think, require me to quote JOSEPHUS, or the Jewish Rabbies, to prove that SOLOMON, sometimes departed from the dignity of a prince, and did not always dis­play the judgment of a philosopher.

As we know, from his excellent treatise, en­titled. "The Preacher," and from the three [Page 82] thousand proverbs, which he spake that he was occasionally at least, in the habit of thinking so­berly, I feel assured, that although he did not choose to encumber a song with much senti­ment, the following was the soliloquy, which oc­casioned the text of this sermon.

By the partiality of my subjects, and their implicit belief of the excellency of my wisdom, I have been made keeper of the vineyard, or, in other words, monarch of Israel. My fame has reached distant nations. I have the reputation of possessing more knowledge, than all my con­temporary philosophers; than "ETHAN," and "HEMAN," and "CHALCOL," and "DARDA." The Botanists assure me that I speak learnedly of "trees," and that I describe the various gen­era and species of the vegetable kingdom, from the aspiring cedar to the lowly hyssop. HIRAM extols my skill in mechanicks, and affirms, that not an architect throughout the realms of Tyre, can rival the ingenuity of my designs. My subjects praise the blessings of my administration. Foreigners and travellers vie with each other, in making their court to me: Every man brings his present of what is most valuable, vessels of silver, and vessels of gold; even the caprice of a female, has, for once, been restrained, and the Queen of Sheba's admiration of my wisdom, was the same when she left, as when she entered my palace. But do I completely deserve these va­rious and enthusiastick encomiums? Have I well governed myself, as well as my kingdom? [Page 83] Have I noted and corrected my own faults with the same circumspection that I remarked and punished those of other men. Am I not obliged, conscious of the license of my own palace, to suffer the men of Judah and Israel, to waste all their time eating and drinking, and making mer­ry, and is not this revelry the pernicious result of my careless example, rather than a chastized joy, under my prudent government? Have I consistently arbitrated with rigor the differences between two harlots, while seven hundred are quarrelling in my seraglio, for the lawless favors of their sovereign? No, even myself, endowed with superior powers, have often proved weak and wicked. Placed upon wisdom's summit, I have descended; forgetting my dignity, thought­less of my duties, prostituting my throne, I have been ravished with strange women, and have drunken of the wine which the sons of riot min­gled. I have been promoted to the highly re­sponsible office of keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard I have not guarded vigi­lantly.

If SOLOMON could walk with so good a grace through the valley of humiliation, which we are assured, on the faith of BUNYAN, is one of the most rugged rambles that a christian can take, surely in these modern and degenerate days, al­most every man, who is a "keeper," either of vineyards, or any thing else, may inquire wheth­er he has at all times been a faithful keeper to himself. For if, as we read, that man who has [Page 84] been faithful in a few things, shall be a ruler o­ver many things, to what office shall that man be appointed, who neglects his own duty? Few can be found, who would not, in the hour of self abasement, discover that such was their weakness or their wanderings, they had not strength e­nough to till the vineyard, or stability enough to remain there.

One of the Poets, who did not, like the rest of the tribe, always delight in fiction, after recount­ing the sage precepts of a certain Philosopher, adds, "That strange to tell, he practised what he preached." Notwithstanding my absolute conviction, that a Pastor ought to be an ensample to the flock, I have no doubt, but that I, sometimes, vary from my own doctrines, and negligently keep my own vineyard. I warmly hope that my readers will gather grapes from my thorns, and, when they peruse my exhortations against drowsiness, that they will not inquire how long I court the morn­ing pillow.

"YET NO MAN REMEMBERED THAT SAME POOR MAN."

IN the book of Ecclesiastes, we find related in a very familiar and simple apologue, the siege of a certain city. It was little and thinly inhabited, but it was invaded by a powerful King, and menaced by great bulwarks. Instant capture must have ensued, had not a certain poor man, whose mind was better stocked, than his purse, delivered, by the wisdom of his plans, the city, and freed the inhabitants from their terrors. Here we naturally anticipate a lively picture of the gratitude of the besieged, towards this political saviour. Too many statutes could not be erected in honour of such gallantry and enterprize, too many shekels of silver could not be given to relieve the poverty of him who had so well deserved. We might suppose that the wealthy citizens would pay liberal tithes to one, by whom their all had been saved. Chaste dames and coy virgins, exulting that their purity had not been violated, by a licen­tious soldiery, would naturally crowd around their protector, and the blushes of a thousand cheeks attest that modesty had not been injured. But he, who should draw this conclusion, and imagine that even useful poverty must necessa­rily be recompensed, would prove himself a rash and unobserving man. We might allow the benevolence of his own heart, but what should [Page 86] we think of his knowledge of the hearts of oth­ers? That men are not always grateful for sig­nal favors, that poverty is ever contemptible, e­ven when accompanied by merit, may be learn­ed in the course of every day's experience, may be learned from the sequel of the story, which began this sermon. Though all men natives of the besieged city, had such occasion to recollect their benefactor, yet the mortifying conclusion of the narrative, is, that in the words of my text, no man remembered that same poor man!

However penury may be disdained by those selfish ones, whom legacies and avarice have enriched, we find that the best friend of man a­bounds in benedictions of the poor. In the ser­mon on the mount, a much more accurate and eloquent discourse, than any of MASILLON'S, the poor in spirit are especially named, and a kingdom promised them, surpassing all the thrones and principalities of Europe. It was not the magnificent palace, it was not the Usur­ers bank, it was the poor man's hovel, it was the recess, of the forlorn outcast which the son of the carpenter visited. To the poor the Gospel was preached, it was a poor widow whose two miles shone more brilliantly in the eyes of one, not likely to be dazzled, than all the gold of those opulent contributers, who cast in much to the Jewish treasury. The rich man querying con­cerning future life, is told that a sale of his pos­sessions, and liberal donations to the poor are es­sential to salvation. While Wealth and Power [Page 87] and Rank were neglected, poor Shepherds en­joyed the honor of a glorious annunciation. The companions of the son of Mary were not the opulent▪ Pharisee, and the Roman patrican, but the poor fishermen of Galilee. When dis­patched to exercise the functions of apostleship, they were forbidden purse or scrip. The wealth­iest of them was worth but thirty pieces of silver, and those JUDAS gained by speculating upon his saviour. The close of the bargain might prove that poverty was better then riches. His title to the cash proved more rotten than a Georgia purchase. As he was hanged for his pains, his money raised him for a time, but then "it was fifty cubits higher than he dreamed of."

"GAD, A TROOP SHALL OVERCOME HIM, BUT HE SHALL OVERCOME AT THE LAST."

THE patriarch JACOB, in his last moments, having summoned his sons to hearken un­to his prophecy, and to receive his benediction; after characterizing their temper, proceeds to describe their future fortunes, and emphatically observes of GAD, that though at the first onset of numbers he would be vanquished, in the end he would prove a victor. This singular pre­diction [Page 88] was doubtless justified by the early hab­its and undaunted perseverance of the heroick son of ISRAEL. The observing patriarch had remarked the conduct of GAD, in some scene of adversity. When the tempest of misfortune loured, he did not, like unstable REUBEN, run for shelter to his " father's couch." When the corn of Canaan was blighted, and the rest of the children of JACOB looked anxiously one upon another, he did not despair of making an easy Egyptian purchase, and of filling their sacks from the granaries of PHARAOH. I think I can see him on the road to Egypt, looking forward, con­fident and determined. Not murmuring, like his fellow travellers, that the famine was so sore, they should certainly perish, but cheerfully ex­horting not to despond, and expressing his ani­mated hope that either the hospitality or avarice of the country would furnish them subsistence. While the irritability of SIMEON and LEVI, in­flamed by hunger, was manifested by angry ex­ecration, while ISSACHAR, no more an ass couchant, brayed loud discontent, and NAPH­ [...]ALI, careless of his wonted plausibility, forgot to give goodly words, the perseverance of GAD was unbroken, and the philosophick serenity of his temper unruffled. He felt the pressure of hunger, as a man, and therefore could not whimper, like a child. "Shall I make," he might say, "the same simple bargain, as my uncle ESAU. Shall I lose my courage, when it is most useful, in the hour of necessity, and sell [Page 89] my spirit for a morsel of bread? No, although the ovens of my country are empty, and there should be no herd in my father's stalls, although not a lamb shall be left me to fold at Sechem, and the fairest of our olives refuse her fruit, if I must perish, let me perish like a brave man, and let death find me not meanly prostrate, but in an erect posture."

Few of the youthful personages in sacred his­tory, challenge our admiration more than this gallant son of ZILPAH, whom the discerning prescience of his father, saw would prove finally superior to every obstacle of ill fortune. I con­fess, in my familiar style, that I love the char­acter of this primitive lad of spirit, I wish his ex­ample to be faithfully copied by aspiring youth, and that when, eager to behold rising merit, I look through the lattice, I may behold a troop coming, and of the tribe of GAD.

A Pagan philosopher, although he never heard, or read a word concerning JACOB, or his sons, yet was so pleased with a character, similar to that, pourtrayed in my text, that he breaks out into a most passionate exclamation of praise, describing

and concludes, with the enthusiam peculiar to his age and country, that to discern such a spec­tacle, the gods look down anxiously from their skies.

[Page 90]When I see a worthy husbandman, minister­ing affectionately, to the distresses of his family, stretched on sick beds in every room of his cot­tage. When I hear him tell the sheriff, attach­ing the last of his kine, that he hopes better times, when he can discharge honest debts, with­out legal compulsion—when I see him persevere to labour, in spite of bad crops, and cast repin­ing cares behind him, I think I see a hero and a sage, and that, though a troop of sorrows, harrass him now, he shall, he will overcome them at last.

A youth, whom I observe at work betimes, and, in the intervals of leisure, reading books of instruction; when I remark farther, that he is not capricious in business, but the same yester­day and to day, that he quits the beaten track of authority, and hearkens to the suggestions of his own mind, often telling him more than seven watchmen, sitting above in a high tower, when I hear his neighbours say he is prudent, patient and persevering, it will not stagger my belief, if they add that, like the angel of the Laodicean church, he is "poor and miserable, and blind and naked," for I am positive, that he will o­vercome at last.

"ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRST MONTH —SET IN ORDER THE THINGS THAT ARE TO BE SET IN ORDER." ^*

IT has been remarked by ingenious moralists, that although the negligence of mankind suf­fers minute divisions of Time, to pass unregard­ed away, yet at the close of centuries or years, it is common to pause and compute in what man­ner they have been employed. To justify the truth of this observation, most of my parishion­ers, who have toyed with time, days and months, begin now to grieve that another idle year is gone, and resolve that the next shall be more busy. While all round him are repeating the compli­ments of the season, and with jocund voices, wishing each other " A happy new year," the Lay Preacher, with affectionate zeal, will sug­gest plans, by which these annual wishes for fe­licity may be realized.

Most men are criminally idle. I confess with candor, that I loiter and slumber much, and while I preach industry to others, am myself a castaway. But the sun, which darts his re­proachful rays through the curtain undrawn, at nine o'clock, seems to upbraid my sluggishness, and to wish that I would announce to the lazy of my flock, that they will not, like him, at once shine and be of use, unless, like him, they rise [Page 92] seasonably. My readers are therefore vehe­mently exhorted, early to extinguish their can­dles, and to use the Day Lamp, which neither sputters nor flares, whose wick never burns out, and whose oil never fails. All who wish that the year may be happy, must rigorously observe this injunction. No complaints must be heard of the chill of winter mornings, or the shortness of summer nights, but as soon as the above Lamp begins to glimmer, let them rise and work. They will soon be convinced that it is so ingen­iously contrived, its radiance will not offend the eyes, nor its exhalations taint the lungs, like the vulgar tapers of midnight. If the Lay Preach­er himself, should, contrary to his own doctrine, be found snoring in his study, while his neigh­bours are walking in their vocation, he gives them full permission to call a council, and dis­miss him from his office.

Instead of employing the usual expression, of "a happy new year," it would perhaps, be an improvement to vary the phrase, and adapt it to the character of the person, who is addres­sed.

Thus should I compliment a man of feeble knees,, whose eyes are red, and whose purse is impoverished by "tarrying late at the wine," I should wish him a sober year. I should wish that his landlord, when the third bowl or bottle is called for, would refuse to trust, and that the liquor he swallowed, instead of raising, would de­press his spirits, and that he might peruse seri­ously, [Page 93] that chapter of the Prophet, which de­nounces "woe to the drunkards of EPHRAIM."

If I meant that a sluggard should enjoy a hap­py year, I should wish him an active and labo­rious one. I would apply to some noisy team­ster, or some importunate client, to bellow at his window, at the dawn of day. I would even advance a dollar from my small salary, to pur­chase a couple of cocks, to crow him up to exer­tion. The year of the idler, would then un­doubtedly be happy. You would hear from him no complaints of spleen, or nervous disor­ders. He would have no bill to pay the apoth­ecary for pills, to cure indigestion. He would not only "set his things in order on the first month," but habit would cause order to appear throughout his affairs, during the year.

Suppose that I should tackle a sleigh, and go with my wife to Boston. I could not fail, ei­ther in the market or some coffee house, of meeting that animal, more restless than a hum­ming bird, called a Democrat or Jacobin. If I wished him a happy new year, he would instant­ly conclude that I meant a revolutionary one. He would imagine that my wish involved the abdication of WASHINGTON, the execution of JAY, and the introduction of the Guillotine. Now, as I am a good subject, and perfectly well satisfied with the present order of things, noth­ing could be farther from my intention. Guarding against a meaning so mischievous, I would express my annual compliment different­ly, [Page 94] and wish him an obedient and well governed year. I would interdict him from reading French gazettes, forbid his pronouncing the word "RODESPIERRE," and debar him from noctur­nal clubs, or speeches. The man would infallibly become a good federalist, and his year would be happy.

The wish for Gamblers must be expressed in a very extraordinary and enigmatical manner. Instead of a happy new year, it would be the du­ty of their real friends to pray that it might be an unlucky one. An unlucky year would be a year of jubilee to the gamester. Such a year would operate a thorough reformation. Should the friendly wish for ill luck be realized, and the gamester neither hold pam flush, four by honors, nor the odd trick, what a clear saving to his purse, his health and his time! He would soon consider cards as the emissaries of Misfortune, he would endeavour to grow rich, by surer cal­culations, he would not only discard the Knave from his hand, but from his conduct, and be more anxious to turn the penny, than a Trump.

Finally, to use the Parson's immemorial ad­verb, finally, Brethren, The Lay Preacher with the fervent kindness of St. PAUL, "sendeth greeting to many," and wishes that this and ev­ery future year may prove eminently happy. That this hope may not be deferred, he recom­mends the adoption of every laudable mean, to promote so valuable an end. Due attention to order in the distribution of time, to economy of [Page 95] expense, and to prudence of behaviour, will oc­casion the present to be like the happiest of past years, yea and much more abundant.

"FOR LO! THE WINTER IS PAST, THE RAIN IS OVER AND GONE, THE FLOWERS APPEAR ON THE EARTH, THE TIME OF THE SING­ING OF BIRDS IS COME, AND THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE IS HEARD IN OUR LAND." ^*

MEN, who have witnessed the horrors of that tempestuous and deformed season, which by its cold, contracts the body, and by its gloom depresses the mind, naturally feel at the first glimpse of warmth, and vegetation an un­describable rapture. Even in the mild climates of the East, in the sunny gardens of Palestine, the flight, the short, and fleeting winter, was considered an enemy to joy; and SOLOMON congratulates the arrival of SPRING, in a strain of uncommon gaiety. In a tone, soft as the season, and animated as its pleasures, he exhorts his "fair one" to "rise," to "come away," and in the open fields to hear the wild musick of na­ture, and to observe her green and tender tribes, bursting from the sepulchre of cold. This in­vitation [Page 96] is enforced by a most lively description of the landscape; and the appropriate metaphors, SOLOMON employs, seem inspired by the very genius of the season, and the liquid, and harmo­nious words he selects, are responsive to the tur­tle's notes.

If a native of Jerusalem could be thus elated, at the succession of spring, after the mildest reign of winter, what must be the delight of him, who, under our nothern skies, beholds, for more than half the year, a waste of snows, hears the mid­night howl of the storm, and feels the nitrous needles of a frigid atmosphere, lacerating every pore?

But suppositions are superfluous. We need only look at the door of the cottage, or stray in­to the nearest pasture, to discern the operation of spring upon the hopes of the husbandman. Tired of the dull and sullen company of the austere months, and disgusted with the chimney corner, which denies room and exercise to his plough, at the whistle of the first robin, he flies, like "the roe," or the "young hart of Bether," to furrows and fields. The genial sun burnishes his manly cheek, the soft and voluptuous air, vivifies his sturdy limbs, he surveys the rising blade, and anticipates the golden harvest.

But though Nature, in her various exhibi­tions of verdure and of flowers, and by her chorus of singing birds, seems at first view to have no other object, than to amuse our species, as a Painter, or Musician, yet, on reflection, we [Page 97] shall find her both a provident matron, in pre­paring our nutriment, and a useful monitor, urging us to toil. As I am entirely of opinion with that Ancient, and with that Poet, who saw his duty inscribed on every leaf, and found a tongue in trees, and books in the running brooks, I think it would not be unprofitable for every man, who looks abroad, to remark that every department both in the animal, and vege­table kingdom is in action. Those countless tribes, who during winter, were fast locked in the chambers of frost, are now each moment on the wing, and incessantly employed. No pause can be discerned in nature's present operations, every energy is awake, and even inert matter progressing. It seems to me impossible that an Idler should rove on our mountains, and not be lessoned into industry. In January, when green corn could not wave, and the violet of our val­lies was unfolded, he might argue himself into a belief, that to him a suspension of native powers was alike necessary. But in May, there is a mil­lion incentives to exertion, and not one reasona­ble excuse for supineness. Man was destined to activity, like the other parts of our system, and they call on him to lend a helping hand to their labors. The most minute drop of sap, rising in its tube, and the embryo germ bursting from bark, to a contemplative listner, appear to speak and upbraid the slothful man for not be­ing in useful motion, like themselves.

The parellel has been so often run between [Page 98] the spring time of the year, and the spring time of life, that all remarks, and doctrines upon this resemblance must be of course trite and elemen­tary. But, though the theme is by no means novel to my younger readers, I wish them to permit me for once to forego all attempts at o­riginality, and to add a hundredth remark to the ninety nine of my predecessors. They will gratify the Lay Preacher, if amid their rapid ca­reer of thoughtlessness and pleasure, they will stop to make some provision for the dreary sea­son of old age, which will inevitably find that stores of some kind are necessary. They will, I hope, sow the seeds of wisdom seasonably, and not, like the fool of Lord BOLINGBROKE, plant in autumn, and expect to reap in winter.

"AND SHE MADE HASTE, AND LET DOWN [...] FROM HER SHOULDER. AND [...], AND I WILL GIVE THY [...]."

[...] [Page 99] which finds a ready way to the heart, was never more successfully atchieved, than by the Orien­tals. The other evening, as I was turning over, agreeably to my usual practice, the pages o scripture, I dwelt with undescribable pleasure upon certain passages in the life of the patriarch ABRAHAM. I had passed the afternoon, in what is called modish company, and yet could not avoid remarking that the extreme selfishness of men and women of the world, led them, even at a moment when they assembled for ostenta­tious civility, to behave discourteously. If such rudeness, I murmured to myself, can be tolerat­ed in a refined age, let me view the behaviour of those of old time, before dancing masters were discovered, and when message cards were not sent by one Patriarch's lady to another. I found as I expected, that even herdmen and shepherds had as much genuine politeness as Lord CHES­TERFIELD, and that a country maiden, the daughter of BETHUEL, the son of MILCAH, could behave with as much propriety, as though she had been educated in a boarding school. The story of this pastoral girl's conduct I wish to tell at large, and that the delicacy of fashionable readers would allow me, on this occasion, so much pedantry as to quote the original. But, as a whole chapter in Genesis might appear too long, and disproportionate for a short sermon, I will attempt to narrate in my own words.

ABRAHAM, a most affectionate parent, per­ceiving that his life declined, and zealous with [Page 100] the anxiety of old age, for an establishment for ISAAC, intreats a confidential steward of the household, that he would not suffer the inexpe­rienced heart of his son to be captivated by the Canaanitish beauties. At the earnest request of the patriarch, the servant binds himself to solic­it for ISAAC a wife of his own rank, religion and country. After sanctioning this promise, by one of the most tremendous oaths among the Jewish usages, he harnesses his camels, and de­parts for Mesopotamia. On his arrival at the suburbs of Nahor, a city of that country, fatigu­ed with a tedious journey, and tender of his drudging camels, he makes, them kneel by a well of water, to take their necessary refreshment. In this weary moment, REBEKAH appears; and the first accents that fell from the parched tongue of the traveller, were to solicit a little water from the pitcher, which she carried, " And she made haste, and let down her pitcher from her shoulder, and said, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also."

Let us now gaze earnestly at these simple, yet beautiful features.

The female whose courtesy is thus recorded, was a woman of some distinction, in those pasto­ral times. Her father was of a stock abundant­ly respectable, for he was allied to ABRAHAM, and her brother was the opulent LABAN, whose cattle strayed on a thousand hills. Engaged in domestick duty, she meets a stranger, in the garb, probably of a hireling, for he is called, in [Page 101] the text, "servant," begrimed with dust, and hav­ing no claim to her favor. She is asked for water, which she cheerfully gives, and the careless read­er will not be aware of the extent of the obliga­tion, if he have not surveyed a map of Palestine, and adverted to the sandiness and thirst of the soil. In that arid region, a brook was a more joyous sight to a panting shepherd, than a bumper would be now to the votary of wine, the invaluable well spring, eagerly sought, and ob­stinately contended for, by different tribes, was, from the nature of the earth, at such a distance below the surface, that to obtain water was a work both of toil and time. But, forgetting her home, forgetting herself, and "disdaining little delicacies," she thinks only of the sufferings of the way faring stranger; and with that " kind charity" which the Apostle emphasizes, with that genuine, disinterested civility, beyond the Court of Versailles, the tedious descent of the well she repeatedly tries, and the cooling pitch­er imparts, not only to the man, but even to his unpetitioning beasts. "Drink," says the gen­erous girl, and, trust me that I can feel likewise for your burdened companions, "for I will give thy camels drink also." This was benevolence, such as is not generally found. It was emi­nently disinterested, prompt and diffusive. It was disinterested; for the tongue which she cooled was not that of a youthful gallant, trol­ling the oily phrases of flattery. He, who drained the pitcher, which the assiduity of RE­BEKAH [Page 102] filled, was an old man, a servant, and a stranger. It was prompt; for she "hasted," and she "ran" to do good; and drew water for "all the camels," though the troop consisted of ten. It was diffusive; for they were minutely regarded, no less than their proprietor.

I warmly wish that the manners of many, who deem themselves polished, were at the pres­ent day, as excellent as those of this primitive well bred woman. Frequenting no assemblies, but those of the next green, or meadow, receiv­ing no lessons of good breeding, but those which her own warm heart dictated, we find her de­portment graceful, though she never paid a dancing master, we find her a maid of honor, though she never saw a Court! True Politeness, unlike that of men of the mode, consists in actu­ally rendering little services to our neighbor, rather than in the ostentatious promise of great ones. Indifferent to its own ease, it thinks much of another's, discerns the latent wish, and super­cedes the necessity of asking favors, by seasona­bly bestowing them.

"WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?"

TO this query of ISAIAH the watchman makes, I think, but a simple reply; and tells the prophet what, if he had the least smat­tering [Page 103] of astronomy, he must have well known before, "That the morning cometh, and also the night." Any old Almanack could have said as much. I think that night, however sooty and illfavoured it may be pronounced by those who were born under a day star, merits a more par­ticular description. I feel peculiarly disposed to arrange some ideas in favour of this season. I know that the majority are literally blind to its merits, they must be prominent indeed to be discerned by the closed eyes of the snorer, who thinks that night was made for nothing but sleep. But the student and the sage are wil­ling to believe that it was formed for higher pur­poses; and that it not only recruits exhausted spirits, but sometimes informs inquisitive, and a­mends▪ wicked ones.

Duty, as well as inclination, urges the Lay Preacher to sermonize, while others slumber. To read numerous volumes in the morning, and to observe various characters at noon, will leave but little time, except the night, to digest the one or speculate upon the other. The night, there­fore, is often dedicated to composition, and while the light of the paly planets discovers at his desk the Preacher, more wan than they, he may be heard repeating emphatically with Dr. YOUNG, "Darkness has much Divinity for me." He is then alone, he is then at peace. No com­panions near, but the silent volumes on his [Page 104] shelf, no noise abroad, but the click of the vil­lage clock, or the bark of the village dog. The Deacon has then smoked his sixth, and last pipe, and asks not a question more, concerning JO­SEPHUS, or the Church. Stillness aids study, and the Sermon proceeds. Such being the ob­ligations to night, it would be ungrateful not to acknowledge them. As my watchful eyes can discern its dim beauties, my warm heart shall feel, and my prompt pen shall describe, the uses and the pleasures of the nocturnal hour.

Watchman, what of the night? I can with propriety, imagine this question addressed to myself, I am a professed Lucubrator, and who so well qualified to delineate the sable hours, as "A meagre, muse rid mope, adust and thin." However injuriously night is treated by the [...]leepy moderns, the vigilance of the antients could not overlook its benefits and joys. In as early a record, as the book of Genesis, I find that ISAAC, though he devoted his assiduous days to action, reserved speculation till night. "He went out to meditate in the field at the eventide." He chose that sad, that solemn hour, to reflect upon the virtues of a beloved and departed mother. The tumult and glare of day suited not with the sorrow of his soul. He had lost his most amiable, most genuine friend, and his unostentatious grief was eager for privacy and shade. Sincere sorrow rarely suffers its tears to be seen. It was natural for ISAAC to [Page 105] select a season to weep in, which should resem­ble "the colour of his fate." The darkness, the solemnity, the stillness of eve were favorable to his melancholy purpose. He forsook therefore the bustling tents of his father, the pleasant "south country," and "well of Lahairoi," he went out and pensively meditated at the eventide.

The Grecian and Roman philosophers firmly believed that "the dead of midnight is the noon of thought." One of them is beautifully de­scribed by the Poet, as soliciting knowledge from the skies, in private and nightly audience, and that neither his theme, nor his nightly walks were forsaken till the sun appeared and dimmed his "nobler intellectual beam." We undoubt­edly owe to the studious nights of the ancients most of their elaborate and immortal produc­tions. Among them it was necessary that every man of letters should trim the midnight lamp. The day might be given to the Forum or the Circus, but the night was the season for the Statesman to project his schemes, and for the Po­et to pour his verse. Night has likewise with great reason been considered in every age as the astronomer's day. Young observers, with energy, that "an undevout astronomer is mad." The privilege of contemplating those brilliant and numerous myriads of planets which bedeck our skies is peculiar to night, and it is our duty, both as lovers of moral and natural beauty, to bless that season, when we are indulged with [Page 106] such a gorgeous display of glittering and useful light. It must be confessed that the seclusion, calmness, and tranquility of midnight, is most friendly to serious and even airy contempla­tions. Milton, in one of his poems, says fer­vently

The rigid Dr. JOHNSON was so convinced that late hours were auxiliary to the feast of rea­son and the flow of soul, that he used to declare "no man, but a scoundrel went to bed before midnight." This expression was perhaps too strong, and he would not have used it, had he lived in a farm house. But his love of the con­versation of men of letters and his experience that Fancy is generally most wakeful, when Dull­ness sleeps, tempted him to employ a phrase which must startle every laborer, who, by mere lassitude of limb is compelled early to retire.

Night being friendly to playful no less than to metaphysical, and abstract thought, not only the author and statesman watch, but likewise the sons of sociability and glee. Those, who "eat the bread of carefulness," go soon to bed, to digest their meal, and leave the darkened hours to be enjoyed by men of genius, or wasted by men of pleasure. St. PAUL avers that they that [Page 107] be drunken are drunken in the night, and I know that its broad mantle is frequently em­ployed to cover excess from the world. Still, the arrival of night is greeted by many, who wish neither to sleep, nor drink it away. Conver­sation often holds a levee at midnight, and Wit and Sentiment and Song like the Fairies, assem­ble and sport before the cock crow. I think it treason to this sable power, who holds divided empire with day, constantly to shut our eyes at her approach. To long sleep, I am decidedly a foe. As it is expressed by a quaint writer, we shall all have enough of that in the grave. Those, who cannot break the silence of night by vocal throat, or eloquent tongue, may be permit­ted to disturb it by a snore. But he, among my readers, who possesses the power of fancy and strong thought, should be vigilant as a watch­man. Let him sleep abundantly for health, but sparingly for sloth. It is better, sometimes, to consult a page of philosophy than the pillow.

"BETTER IS THE END OF A THING, THAN THE BEGINNING THEREOF."

ASSUREDLY, says I with a desponding face, when I dipt my pen into my ink-horn, and expected to bring up a sermon [Page 108] from the bottom. My little flock of readers, ex­pect that the Pastor will make his weekly visit­ation, and yet I feel too languid to excurse far. I wish that the task was fulfilled; verily, verily, SOLOMON, whether you muttered it, when building the temple, or thinking of your concu­bines, you never muttered more wisdom, than "Better is the end of a thing, than the begin­ning thereof."

Without an invocation to the sons and daughters of Indolence, for we all know what would be the language of that family, should e­ven the persevering and industrious be asked the question, they would refer the querist to SOLOMON's works for an answer.

Beginning! continued I, is like JOHN BUN­YAN's hill, so difficult that it would pose even a christian to get fairly over. Beginning! Why it is the terror of schoolboys, and of pretty Miss in her teens; it makes lawyers stammer, and lovers timid. I hate to begin my sermon; and, quoth my grandmother, looking at her knitting work, through spectacles, I would rather foot ten pair of your blue stockings, than begin one.

But of ending, how many sine sentences could I scribble, had I "the pen of a ready writer!" How exultingly the Saint talks of " finishing the faith," how cheerily the Labourer swings his scythe, when haying is done, and how briskly a bridegroom ascends three chamber stairs at once, when courtship is at an end ▪! I married a fond couple, last week, and, as usual, neglected the [Page 109] wedding sermon, till the eager twain came blushing into my study. When I joined their hands, I felt pulses beating high, through their white gloves, and saw eyes sparkle expressively, when I extemporized from "Better is the end of a thing, than the beginning thereof."

One of my parishioners, a very industrious and thriving cobler, who supports a wife, " nine small children, and one at the breast," by his la­bour of leather, I knew, "even from his boyish days." At fourteen he sang wicked ballads to his fellow apprentices, drank raw rum, in a frol­ick, out of the old shoes of the shop, and burnt the boots of the customers. At twenty one, three benevolent maidens complained of him to the 'squire, and he was obliged to pawn his freedom suit, to indemnify the parish. He next commenced a roaring blade, drank flip before breakfast, laid out his heel tap money in tobac­co, and the tavern clock struck one, when he told the last negro story. At length, he picked up Dr. FRANKLIN'S "Poor Richard," and found that this was not "The way to Wealth." He broke his mug, threw away his box, bought stock, earned money, kept it, and married. I stopt at his shop, a few mornings since, at sunrise, to try on a pair of shoes. As soon as the noise of six of his journeymen's hammers ceased, I could not forbear comparing the past with the present. Ah, said I, looking wistfully at his last, and the waxed thread he was twining, and thinking that St. GREGORY, St. AUSTIN, and [Page 110] all the Fathers of the Church have punned, Ah, Mr. CRISPIN, how much more profitable is your end, than your beginning.

PALEY, an Archdeacon of the Church, and, what is much better, a worthy man, tells us, in his book of philosophy, that there is a great dif­ference between beginning with a thousand pounds, and ending with a hundred, and the reverse. It is of much import, therefore, if we mean to end well, that we should begin tolera­bly. I know no better beginning for a young man, than a stock of honesty, prudence, and in­dustry. It is better than stock in the shop, or a thousand pounds from a rich father. If a man should take it into his head to begin with knavery and theft, it cannot be dissembled, though the words of SOLOMON are against me, that there are ignominious ends, and if Hemp grew in Jeru­salem, he ought to know it, if not, I proceed to inform him that a rope's end, is one of the most pitiful terminations in life. Neither "better," not best can be predicted of such an "end," even by the accuracy of his logick. 'Tis a vile end, and, you trickish jockies, be not in such haste to put off your spavined horses, for double their worth to the believing buyer. Lame as they are, you may be willing to avail yourselves, even of their imperfect speed, to convey you to the Genesee. Better that the Lake sever should be your end, than the gallows.

When my spirits are the victims of the east [...]nd, when one of my agonizing head aches, [Page 111] disturb "the palace of the soul," when my small salary, is scantily and grudgingly paid, or, when remembrance of false friends ingratitude presses strongly upon me, I then read the third chapter of [...], and exclaim, better is the end of life, than the beginning. Some there are who are perpetually crowned with rose buds of delight, be­fore they are withered, who "eat and drink, and enjoy the good of their labour," and then "rise up to play." To this class existence has abun­dant charms, and their airy fancies, pleased with the "beginning" of life's day, [...]ut far away, the "end." But it may be made a very serious question, whether the majority could not pro­nounce the words of the text▪ as a creed. He who is poor or miserable, blind or naked, must certainly wish for better accommodations, where he could be well paid, fed and enjoy "perfect vision." To such an unfortunate, such a smoky house as he inhabits, must be offensive; and if you convince his reason that in a "house, not made with hands," more a [...]y and gladsome a­partments are prepared, his feelings will rejoice when his mortal lease expires, and he will apply, and believe the quoted words of SOLOMON.

"QUENCH NOT THE SPIRIT."

FOR, should you, ye insensible ones, you would, perhaps, put out a light to lighten the nations. The lustre of spirit is brilliant, and even its heat is cherishing, let this fire from heaven, therefore, be never obscured, left dark­ness overshadow the land, and thick darkness the people. Let him, who is largely furnished with the gifts of mind, not only have his merit seen, but rewarded; and, in obedience to the precept of PAUL, let the world fondly foster his active spirit. For if it prove a spirit of enter­prize, or invention, how will that world rejoice, to behold it, like the hero of MILTON, shooting upwards, a pyramid of fire.

My readers must excuse the preceeding rhap­sodical and glowing paragraph, so foreign from the usual level style of the Lay Preacher. The noble nature of the mind, naturally renders one, supposed to have the care of souls, eager for its advancement, and grieved at its depression.

"Quench not the spirit," what an apparently superfluous caution! At first a careless, unre­flecting critick, might suppose, that the phrase was employed by the saint of Tarsus, as a rhetor­ical flourish, to allure the attention of AGRIP­PA, or tickle the ear of FELIX. "Quench the Spirit," he would exclaim, why who is there, that would put that light under a bushel?—I will tell thee, thou vain reasoner, and vindicate the [Page 113] Saint. The neglectful undiscerning world, that suffers talents to lie in the napkin. PAUL both felt and saw the necessity of such a serious warn­ing as the te [...]t. Doubtless, while he was preaching in the Forums of Rome, or the Churches of Thessalonica, he experienced the negligence of some, and the ingratitude of others. He dreaded, lest even his own fervent spirit should be damped, perhaps quenched, by the frowns of CAESAR, or the hand of a Cen­turion. He felt, that the supine lethargy of Paganism, could not be roused, even by the en­ergy of his eloquence. He recollected that, de­termined by exteriors, the hasty Corinthians caught not the spirit of his doctrines, and un­dervalued his mind, because his body was weak, and his speech contemptible. Conscious of the homage due to intellect, and sorrowing, to be­hold the pearls of wisdom, trodden under foot, he pertinently advises the Thessalonians, as in the text, not to quench the spirit, not to suffer genius to pine in obscurity.

Some years ago, in the capital of Newen­gland, a certain literary lawyer stood up, not to tempt, but teach his townsmen. The despe­rate debtors of his native State, had endeavour­ed to interrupt the course of its justice, and crush the wheels of its government, and he his­toricised the events of the insurrection. When I was on the form of a Latin School, I recollect studying a narrative, of a conspiracy at Rome, written with singular purity, by SALLUST. I [Page 114] think, and politer scholars than a Lay Preacher, ere of similar opinion, that if SALLUST could have been summoned to record the revolt of SHAYS, he could not have produced a work, frugal of words, prodigal of ideas, happy in ex­pression, like the volume of the Lawyer. But it seems that his fellow citizens wanted a PAUL to caution them, for they would not defray the charges, even of binding the book▪ They quenched the spirit of the historian. Eager to know the cause of such criminal lack of patron­age, in my last journey to the metropolis, I track­ed many a street, and lane, in quest of genius, I looked, and lo! a modest man, neither a French philosopher, nor a dancer on wires, nor a vaulter upon steeds, nor a writer in the Chron­icle. Ah, I muttered to myself, if the flame of his spirit has not blazed in these directions, it is not marvellous, that the cautious Bostonians, should cry "quench!"

"I HEAR THAT THERE BE DIVISIONS AMONG YOU, AND I PARTLY BELIEVE IT."

IN the social state, obviously framed for the promotion of the common good, a credulous man might suppose that there would be no di­visions. But this mistake, observation, if she had [Page 115] only half an eye, and peered with that through a glass darkly, would correct. Where only two or three are gathered together, some unsocial, malev­olent passion will start up, and forbid their una­nimity. But in great and political bodies, I a­mong old and rival nations, opinions being as numerous as the individuals, who harbor them, there the clash of faction and the clash of swords will be so often heard, that there will be no room left to doubt "divisions."

I believe that I have, somewhere, hinted to my readers, that a newspaper lies occasionally on my table. But I survey that weekly map of human life, more with the feelings of a moralist, than of a politician, and shed tears, rather than wine at the intelligence of a victory. If the publick papers recorded the happy marriage, and not the sudden death, if they painted the tranquility of a Federal, and not the turbulence of a French government, every son of sensibility would peruse them with rapture. But, espec­ially, at this jarring period, when our ears ring with " the world's debate," it is most painful to turn over pages, which, crowded with recitals of battles, sieges, assassination, and slaughter, are nothing more than the records of animosity. The old world is rent in pieces by "divisions," Nothing but "wars" and "fightings" can satis­fy the restlessness of France, the pride of En­gland, and the stately ambition of Germany. In France there is jangling in the Cabinet, as well as the shock of hostile lances in the field. How [Page 116] many wise and virtuous men have felt the edge of a Revolutionary ax, because they differed in senti­ment from a Revolutionary Tribunal. How many Britons have found untimely death in the dykes of Flanders, who might have been gathered like a shock of corn in his season, had not "divisions" among the nations urged them far from peace and the plough. However men may talk of universal benevolence, and the amiableness of the charities of life, yet we hear every day, of division among them, and we are forced fully to believe it. In our own country, though the weapons of war are sheathed, yet "divisions," frequent and pernicious, like the tares and thorns in the parable, arise, and mar the peace of the community. Among the borderers of Pennsylvania, "Division" touched with a brand the head of the whisky still, and the fiery spirits of insurgency blazed against a government, the first and fairest on the earth. Division has been the President of many a "club" and "self created society:" Division, a scowling monster, more ugly than the "Green Dragon," whose den, she was wont to haunt. Division has looked askance at the Treaty, and has even with au­dacious front adventured to assail WASHING­TON, but he steadfastly smiled and she vanished away.

Men disagree and divide in minute, no less than in momentous questions. My parishion­ers inform me of various divisions, and I partly believe them. Thus I hear that two young [Page 117] girls of equal pretensions to wit and beauty, cannot possibly live in friendship together, for, like the CAESAR and POMPEY of LUCAN, one cannot bear a rival, and the other is impatient of a superior. I hear that two neighboring shopkeepers will not even look at each other, nor go to the same tavern, nor walk the same side of a street; all in consequence of an un­lucky division. Two Counties will contend for years, which shall enjoy the privilege of a shire, and where the Courthouse shall stand, and thus cut out work for lawyers, even before a place is provided for them to wrangle in. Neighbors will squabble about an old tree, and an old horse, and expend [...]00 dollars in Court fees, to determine which shall have the mighty privilege of putting out the fire, by piling on the wood of the one, and of having a neck broke, by riding the other. But what is a more preposterous division than any enumerated, is what is called an ecclesiastical dispute. To such an absurd height has this species of contention been carried that, in despite of the opinion of the Saint, that a be­lieving wife may convert an infidel husband, church doors have been shut against a convert­ed female for pairing with an unconverted mate. Last of all, to end this disgusting catalogue of "divisions," christians professing to worship in concert, have pulled each other by the beard, in ascertaining who should be their minister, and have warred furiously to know, where the tem­ple of peace should be erected.

"WINE AND NEW WINE TAKE AWAY THE HEART."

—AND cloud the head, and empty the purse, and beget writs of attachment, and an intimacy with deputy sheriffs and gaols; and—I should become quite out of breath and "the time would fail me" to recount all the mischiefs which wine and new wine occasion.

But, I hear young CLOD, my neighbor's hired man, whisper to the schoolmaster of the village, "Our grapes are sour grapes, from which we can­not press new wine: You cannot get a drop in Newengland except what the traders sell, and that comes over sea, and is mingled with molasses in the vessel, and when it reaches us be­coms new cyder," rather than new wine. Now young CLOD having ploughed our uplands, and chopped wood in our forests, and read MORS­E'S Geography, has some right to conclude that the "hearts" of Americans cannot be tak­en away, because we lack wine and new wine, and experience not when the time of the vintage of the grape is near.

But the wise prophet who sang to the men of JUDAH, many hundred years ago, the many woes of wine, though he used that word, meant INTOXICATION in its broadest sense. Had HOSEA lived in Newengland, and seen our la­borers lifting a tin measure to their mouths at five o'clock in the morning, swearing at noon, [Page 119] and staggering at night, he would doubtless have prophesied that new rum; yea and gin sling, and brandy grog "take away the heart."

Hear me, my countrymen, I am not an uni­versalist, nor a new light, but I am a moral preacher. Though I do not whine to you from a pulpit, and have not the voice of the charmer, charming never so wisely, yet I have your good at heart, and will promote it all in my power; and I ask no salary, but your reforma­tion.

You complain that Lawyers oppress, and that Congress tax you, that you have no money; that you must work hard; and that, though some of you wish to read useful books and pam­phlets, you have not cash to exchange with the Bookseller.—I will hint that mode of con­duct, which escapes a bill of cost, supports gov­ernment, makes labor light, and procures you a whole Library. It will render you in very deed that virtuous and enlightened yeomanry, which shall be the pride and protection of our empire.

You inhabit a region which, though it has not been celebrated by the poets, though its rivers are not so warm as those which feel a southern sun, and roll through Italy and France, has a soil productive of all the essentials to health and happiness. The sharp air of your hills blows a­way disease, and your juicy bee [...] is a better bra­cer than the bark. If you will plant the corn, and sow the rye and wheat field, pay necessary [Page 120] debts and contract no superfluous ones, and drink wine and new wine, and rum and brandy, with moderation; believe me you will have property enough for your occasions; you will not be haled before the judge, neither will the officer cast you into prison; but your barns will be full, your kine will, like JESHERUN, "wax fat," and the shade of the prophet, if it hov­ered around you, might whisper, "hearts like these, shall never be taken away."

"ONE THING IS NEEDFUL."

ALL the readers of the Farmer's Museum, thought so lately, when they snatched that paper from the post, and saw not my Ser­mon. What could induce the Lay Preacher to forego his wonted labours, was the general ex­clamation. Various were the conjectures con­cerning the omission of my duty; and some of them resembled the pleasantry of the prophet, that I was either talking, or pursuing, or on a journey, or peradventure sleeping, and would not be awaked. My vanity being thus flattered by the inquiries and anxiety of my friends, I will frankly inform them that in the course of last week, I read three excellent sermons, one hundred pages in JOSEPHUS, two of the canon­ical [Page 121] books of scripture, and a leaf or two in the volume of the human heart, but one thing was needful; my head was clouded by care, my hands were slack to labor, and the spirit of invention had fled away. I therefore dismissed my duty, as FELIX dismissed the accused apostle, to a more convenient season, and devoted the vacant hours to ease, endeavoring to compose my cough and my cares.

Although most modern authors, and some clergymen, choose to write without thinking, I am so whimsical as to be positive that it is the one thing needful. I shall never preach without, at least, two or three ideas in my mind, and as I live in an obscure corner of the world, have on­ly half a dozen books on my shelf, and see but very few faces, my readers must not be surprised if I manage my brain, as a prudent farmer his field; be satisfied with its produce at one season, and allow it to remain fallow at another. The little stock of prudence and knowledge of which I am owner, is very much at the world's service; and when I can say any thing new or useful, I will do it cheerfully, and employ my neighbor CARLISLE's paper, as my speaking trumpet. But when I am sick or stupid, I am resolved not to repeat myself, or quote other men, merely for the sake of scribbling▪ Always in literature and sometimes in use, originality is the one thing needful. I always seek for it as for hidden treas­ure, and [...] I fail to find this jewel of great [Page 122] price, miserable thoughts arise in my mind, and muddy ink flows tardily from my pen.

But let me not wander too far in quest of a­pologies. I trust that my acquaintance with my readers has been so intimate, that they feel the usual prejudices of friendship, and are willing to excuse slight deviations, conscious that I am generally inclined to study many sermons, and to write a few. I hope that the spirit of indul­gence abounds, and that Candor is so constant a companion, as never to be the one thing needful.

Such is the wandering of desire, that not a mortal can be found so perfectly satisfied with his situation as not to wish it either new mod­elled, or mended, or enlarged. To this rest­lessness of temper, one thing is constantly need­ful, and as the poet expresses it,

The boy is eager to be a man, and the maid a wife; the merchant must freight another ship, and the farmer purchase more acres, to render their respective felicity complete. But imagin­ary wants, the bastard progeny of inordinate de­sire are not the one thing needful, which the re­prover of MARTHA enjoined. To forsake old follies, and to cherish good affections is the gen­uine interpretation.

Why do you charge that simple, unsuspect­ing country lass two shillings and sixpence for a piece of your faded ribbon, which would be dear at a penny, Mr SHARP? Your answer is ready, [Page 123] you point to your money chest, you declare it is not yet full, and that money is the one thing needful. This is a great mistake, believe me; had you told me that honesty and good faith were lacking, I might have credited your story. But what need have you of money? You have neither generosity to impart, nor spirit to use it; it is dead matter in your hands, your bank bills are fresh as from the press of the engraver, and your dollars more discoloured with disuse than a rusty nail. Why do you cry incessantly to your customers, "give," "give," like the daugh­ters of the horseleach, and falsely insist that you are poor, and that wealth is the one thing need­ful.

Why do you assume that prim air, and sit with the stiff uprightness of a maypole, quoth I to a coquet, whom I observed at church, more studious of her shawl than of her prayer book, and gazing with more devotion at tall striplings, than at the Parson. Oh Sir, tomorrow is my twenty seventh birth day, I must be quickly married; a husband is a necessary piece of house­hold furniture; to an old maid, he is undoubt­edly the one thing needful.

"GREAT IS DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS."

THE usual exclamation of prejudice, igno­rance or enthusiasm in every age.

In the Acts of the Apostles, the occasion of this phrase is pleasantly recorded. St. PAUL and his colleagues, perceiving the absurdities of the Pagan system, ventured to expose the futility of the heathen worship, and to point out a bet­ter "way" to the heavenly country. But the manufacturers of idols, terribly alarmed at an innovation, which would probably abridge, if not destroy the profits of their trade, immediate­ly convened, though not to deliberate, but to dogmatize. For instead of reasoning coolly up­on the subject, and attempting to prove to the populace, the celestial origin of their goddess, and the active concern she took in the affairs of mortals, they gave a loose to their passions, be­came full of wrath, and bawled out that DIANA was great, without once shewing why. Of all that hotheaded multitude, perhaps not an indi­vidual had Geography enough to ascertain the site of Ephesus, or History enough to inform him of the adventures, or exploits of DIANA. Craftsmen had told the ignorant crowd a pomp­ous tale, to allure them to the silver shrines, and they believed, without examination.

I heartily wish, that this cry of enthusiasm had ceased with the superstition of the ancients. But noises of this nature still tingle in our ears, [Page 125] and a town clerk, at the present day, like his temperate predecessor at Ephesus, could not walk in the market place out of hearing of "Great is DIANA," or some other sound, equal­ly as ridiculous.

Whether it proceeds from the warm climate in which they live, or the brisk champagne they drink, I know not, but the French are singular­ly prone to momentary fits of enthusiasm, almost bordering on convulsions. They are a very voluble and clamorous race, and if they take it into their heads to like DIANA, they will swear, not without gestures, that she is great, though all others affirm she is little. MONTESQUIEU might reason, or ROUSSEAU might harrangue, but the French would not hear, if those san­guinary craftsmen, MARAT and ROBESPIERRE, should summon them to the Convention, or the Champ de Mars, to assassinate a King, or to de­stroy a government. Trifles, like these, would be "light as air" to a Frenchman, if an insidi­ous desperado bawled in his ears the greatness and the glory of liberty and equal rights. One unlucky day, they set up a certain scowling im­age, denominated, in their pretty and liquid language, the Guillotine. This to be sure had a shrine, rather of steel than silver and bowed heads, rather than bended knees were the modes of adoration. Those unlucky subjects, who during a life of loyalty, had been much in the habit of crying Great is the King, were soon of­fered up as a Jewish sacrifice, for times were [Page 126] changed, and they should have said great is "the Mountain!"

A degree conferred by a college is a DIANA, whose divinity many a dunce has acknowledged. College honors, as they are termed by the crafts­men, often operate like amulets and charms, and protect a pedant from the warfare of wit and ridicule. They are a species of salt, which has saved many a weak and decaying brain, from putrefaction. Not a graduate from Cambridge, but vaunts of of his Alma mater, and cries, how prescient, how witty, and how wise is the Uni­versity! A sceptick might doubt the greatness of this our learned DIANA. Its fore knowledge consists in predicting invisible eclipses of the moon, its wit lies at the bottom of a syllogism, and its wisdom watches the weathercocks, and compiles a bill of mortality!

Some have thought that the Cambridge DI­ANA, did not deserve to be worshipped by the learned world. I was once asked by an inquisi­tive foreigner, in what alcove of our University were deposited its own works. It is agreed, says he, that a College is designed to read and write in. Doubtless many of your Professors were Poets; among your Tutors I expect to hear of a CICERO, and the invention of so elevated a character as a President, must certainly have produced a Folio in every science. My un­bounded affection for the College, where I had the honor to pay some three or four hundred pounds, for instruction in the first elements of [Page 127] — nothing. My tenderness for the character of instructors of the most bland and accommodating humour, and my zeal for the literary renown of the most fashionable seminary in my country, urged my silence to this query of the stranger, concerning a subject so delicate. Dear, and learned Sir, I replied, the works of the Univer­sity are not confined within the narrow precincts of an alcove. The works of the University Sir, are, seen, are seen—on commencement days. They are diffused throughout—I wish I knew where, except in the form of stewards' bills, I muttered to myself. The gentleman, perceiving my hesitation, and being a man of great curiosity, and anxious to hear me quote brilliant couplets, from some University Laureat, or whole orations of some eloquent Tutor, now insisted upon a categorical answer. I therefore, in a suppressed voice, broken by many sobs, the tears running down my cheeks, and with a world of apologies, was compelled to reveal to him the nakedness of literature at Cambridge. To his astonishment, and to my sorrow, I narrated facts, "pitiful, wondrous pitiful," like OTHEL­LO's sufferings. I informed him that the Tu­tors, far from being eloquent, like the orators of antiquity, were in general such raw boys, that they were obliged to spell out, even the stated prayer, from the confused breviary of evening recollection. That the elaborate trifling of one Professor, was protracted through five lectures, to shew his pupils what a verb was—no [...]. That [Page 128] another, in his divinity chair, would insult his hearers with the silly miracles of POLYCARP, and in his publick exercises purloin from LELAND, the materials of a funeral eulogy. That Phi­losophy was pedlared out by the penny worth, and the streams of learning, instead of being cheaply and easily conducted to each student, were sold, in their muddiest state, for a higher price than mineral water. That I never heard that any of the College Principals, were ever Poets or Painters, or produced any work more meritorious than a Greek Grammar. That some were of such dubious taste as to reject from the College Library, the works of STERNE and SWIFT, and to commence, at the age of fifty, the study of the British Poets as a task reading! I informed my friend, that the best and bright­est scholars from Dr. MAYHEW, to the present time, were generally ignominiously punished for no other crime than that of volatility. I added that if any incorrigible dunce wished to hide his length of ear, by a square hat academical, if dray horses sought a shelter, or the King of Spain's fourfooted and braying subjects a dormitory, I could easily mark the place. But for a youth of lively parts and sanguine temperament, place him between the upper and nether mill stone, rather than on his knees before the leaden shrine of our Great DIANA of Literature.

"YET DID NOT THE CHIEF BUTLER REMEM­BER JOSEPH BUT FORGAT HIM."

A MOST unlucky instance of shortness of memory, and a strange one too, for Jo­seph had expressly stipulated with the impris­oned butler, that he should recollect the favor­able interpreter of his dream, and obtain from PHARAOH an order for his enlargement.

Forgat him! Is it possible? Did the chief butler, as he filled the cup to PHARAOH, taste the wine so often, that it made him stupid or mad? Was the vine Juice of Egypt, ever mix­ed with poppy water, that it might, like the fa­bled river of oblivion, drown Memory and her tribes? As I know of no ancient record, that alludes to this practice, and in the biography with which MOSES has indulged us, of the chief butler, not a syllable is said, concerning his debauchery, I believe that the supposition that he was a toper, must be waved. We must look a little deeper than the bottom of a glass, or even a bottle, to discover the source of a courtier's ingratitude.

Let us look, therefore, once more into the book of Genesis, and I trust, that so lucid an Historian as MOSES, will shed light upon this sombre subject.

It appears that JOSEPH, suspected of an at­tempt upon the virtue of POTIPHAR's wife, was, by the instigation of that [...] of an­tiquity, [Page 130] committed to prison. According to the sacred text, this was a State prison, a kind of Egyptian Bastile, where, as we read, " The King's prisoners were bound," where meaner fel­ons were excluded, and none were admitted, but such courtiers and retainers to the palace, as had, by their carelessness or their crimes, forfeited the royal favor. It is no great wonder then that a couple of tradesmen, who had such frequent temptations to cheat, as a butler and a baker, should be put in ward. Light bread and sour wine had been vended in the palace, and the abused palate of PHARAOH was offend­ed. JOSEPH, who had ingratiated himself with the chief goaler, was appointed a sort of deputy, or turnkey of the prison, and had the charge of these very delinquents.

One morning, " Behold they were sad;" and, when interrogated, concerning the cause of their gloom, they informed JOSEPH that they had dreamed, and there was no interpreter. The chief butler then related, that he had seen in a vision a clustered vine, of triple branches, whose grapes he pressed into the cup, and gave into the hand of PHARAOH. JOSEPH, after com­forting the prisoner by familiarly explaining his dream, and promising him restoration to his post in the household, pathetically beseeches him that he would in his prosperity reflect on his unjustly accused friend, and mention him to his prince. "Think on me," says the beauti­fully simple original, "when it shall be well [Page 131] with thee, and shew kindness I pray thee, unto me, and make mention of me to PHARAOH, and bring me out of this house." This was surely an easy service; and on the third day, when PHARAOH feasted his servants, when, amid the jollity of an entertainment, the released butler stood at the elbow of his appeased sovereign, what a favorable moment to suggest the proprie­ty of loosing poor JOSEPH, who had been so unjustly bound. But mark an obsequious, cal­lous, cou [...]tly slave. Intent alone upon his own prosperity, he is so busy in filling the ruddy cup for his king and for himself, that not a thought of him intrudes, who has nothing to drink, but his own tears and the waters of affliction. A selfish and ungrateful man, though he should outlive the oldest of the patriarchs, and allay the thirst of a lineage of Egyptian monarchs, would not once think of his benefactor, nor call to mind that visionary vine, which he had seen in adversity. No; a chief butler would have much more lucrative employment than think­ing upon the " Sorrowful sighing of a prisoner." A chief butler did not remember JOSEPH, but forgat him.

Are there not a thousand worldly reasons for this forgetfulness? Prudence might whisper to the butler as he walked through the prison gate, not to lisp the name of JOSEPH, for possibly it might anger PHARAOH, and then his favor would be withdrawn, and the butlership! Be­sides we should remember, that this dreamer in [Page 132] prison, was a very courtier in the palace. Watch­ful enough of his own, and "dealing out his promises as liberally as his liquor." When JO­SEPH had unravelled his entangled dreams, and foretold that he should again have the keys of PHARAOH's beaufet and cellar, I dare affirm that the butler with cringing complaisance, with low bows and perpetual smile, engaged upon his honor not merely to remember, but to renume­rate his deliveer. This was the promise of a courtier —And who is ignorant that his engage­ments like "your humble servant," at the bot­tom of a challenge, mean, if they have any meaning, nothing but death and destruction?— Many are the promises of the chief butlers, the CHESTERFIELDS, the smooth tongued men of the world. They keep them too. But so close, that, when the day of performance arrives, not even their owner can find them—mislaid in some obscure corner of memory's chest!