would you have a safeguard to protect you from the remotest contingency of danger, would you "lay hold on eternal life," let the relation in which you stand to your fellow-creatures pass from your thoughts, let a new relation occupy the room in its stead; remember, lord it as you may over those that are beneath you now, but who will one day have the melancholy satisfaction that they have dragged you down to their own level, mingled in common and undistinguished dust-remember, lord it as you may over those, you, too, are bound to one, far above all the petty grandeur to which the ambition of man can raise himself; you, too, have an infinitely wise, an infinitely good, an all just, an all searching Lord in heaven, whom the most zealous service of the purest heart could never, within a thousandth part, judged by its own merits, satisfy or requite; remember this, and learn to practise in the

world in which you live, a lesson by which you would fain profit in the world to come; be mild, be courteous, be affable, be conciliating-smile on their honest endeavours to please you, as you would wish to be smiled upon yourselfexamine not their actions with too severe an eye, as you would not wish another eye should examine too severely your's: if they do wrong, correct them, tell them of their wrong doing, but let correction, let admonition be tempered with lenity and kindness; if they be dishonest, part with them, refuse them the approbation to their conduct they may require from you, but be not precipitate in your judgment, if appearances be ever so much against them-trust not to appearances, your Master is never precipitate, if appearances be ever so much against you→ he will not condemn you for appearance sake. This branch of your duty well regarded, it may seem, the trial should

cease to be formidable.

But there is

another of as great, even greater importance-example. It is quite possible for a master to present (in the latitude of a common expression) a perfect model of excellence, in the personal treatment of his servants; to show himself towards them the kindest, the most indulgent being in the world, ever appearing to study the gratification of their wishes; and yet, for all that, he may have done but half his duty: indeed, there is a chance, that the part which he has left undone, may be of so great moment, as to destroy entirely all the good impressions produced by that he has done; he may be a licentious man-he may be an irreligious man-he may be a gamester he may, as he imagines, with no detriment to any but himself, pursue a course of conduct which, in its remote effects, shall involve the ruin, spiritual as well as temporal, of thousands. Vice is

very catching, but never is the contagion stronger, than when it rages among those, whom education, knowledge, the possession of cultivated minds, and opportunities for extensive observation, one should imagine, would have preserved from its influence. It is vain, it is worse than vain, it is presumption of the wildest order, for you to require in a servant (and I dare say you would not take one without such an assurance), that he should be moral, sober, conscientious, and speak the truth, when you yourself indulge, without the slightest hesitation, in every species of immorality, are almost always intoxicated, and blot veracity out of the list of virtues. If you receive a man with such a character, can you expect that he will preserve it? Or, even supposing you do not go so far as this, supposing you are only occasionally incorrect, once in a way drunken, neglect truth in what you regard trifling matters, these things

will not escape those who are continually about you; they will observe them, and if your conduct has been in other respects such as to win their esteem, the impression made will be the stronger, and they will more readily run into the fault: to you the consequences of these acts, if not speedily repented of, are misery, remote but certain; to them, ruin, instant and irrecoverable. They had nothing to depend upon but their conduct; your bad example has vitiated that they have lost their all. For their sakes, then, whom you may have hitherto treated with tenderness and regard-for their sakes, then, if not for your own, refrain from vice; if no other motive can influence, let the desolation your misconduct will inevitably spread around you, keep you from the paths of evil; but, should the seed that was early sown, blended as it may have been in its growth, with shoots of a less goodly quality, should that seed