HONORED PARENTS,— I wish I could inform you of wonderful changes in myself,-changes which I have long projected, which I believe to be possible, which are extremely necessary, which I am still laboring, but of which the advances are but gradual and but slow. Yet I am highly pleased to feel that they are somewhat advancing. I am acquiring something of that military discipline of thought* and action, which I suppose will be indispensable through the whole of life; and in this supposition I am glad that life is but short. I sometimes study, and pray, and talk, with such an exceeding ardor, that if it could but be constant, I should soon become an eminent Christian, and an eminent man. My great fault is a tendency (I hope not an incorrigible tendency) to indolent languor. The attainment, if possible, of habitual energy, I feel to be an urgent duty, and an exceeding difficulty. For this purpose I endeavor to assemble a host of impressive considerations around my mind to compel it to activity. It is very unfortunate that many of the circumstances that surround me are not of a kind to act in alliance with these stimulating considerations. A situation where there is nothing lively, will, to a certain degree, inevitably infect one with its dulness. There are situations in the world that would probably aid and augment that fire of mind which the influence of my present one rather tends to quench. But I shall not abandon the generous strife. I still possess what may be called invariable health; my diet continues of the same inexpensive kind; water is still my drink. I congratulate myself often on the superiority in this respect which I shall possess in a season of difficulty, over many that I see. I could, if necessary, live with philosophic complacency on bread and water, on herbs, or on sour milk with the Tartars. . . . . I have a coat sufficiently grave-a dark brownish grey-with a black velvet collar. Every article of clothing is here expensive in the extreme, and yet nowhere can it be more necessary to dress well. It is what may be called a very elegant and fashionable place, and not large enough, like London, Dublin, Bristol, &c., for a man to lose himself in it, so as to be easy and unnoticed. At present I see very little indeed of what is called company. The persons are very few whom my ecclesiastical engagement brings me acquainted with, and I am little inclined to seek many others. I am beginning to learn the French language, with a very sensible "A rational repast; Exertion, vigilance, a mind in arms, YOUNG.-Night viii emigrant priest for my tutor. Such an accomplishment may be of special use ere while. The course of my preaching and reading does not materially alter. I have spent rather too many hours in bed this winter, but shall not so mispend many more; I mean when it becomes warmer to go and bathe and swim in the sea. I lately heard from Mr. Hughes, who, with his family, are as well as usual. He has abandoned his education project. He expresses himself pleased and useful in his preaching work. He is engaged in a kind of mission, or plan of travelling to different places to preach, in the county of Surrey. He writes in a strain of animated piety, and exhorts me to the same. My thoughts often revert to political subjects. The ominous aspect of the times both illustrates and augments their importance. If these subjects had gained the general attention of the people sufficiently much, and sufficiently early, affairs would not have come to the execrable condition we now behold them in. While men have slept the tares have been sown, and now threaten to yield a harvest of death. The consequences of contented ignorance can never be good. The enormous guilt of such a war without, and of such oppression and corruption within, is chiefly chargeable on the thoughtless indifference of the people at large. If a nation will not be vigilant, it must be content to be betrayed. No part of the fault is mine. In this quarter opinions differ as to an invasion. The intention of the French, however, seems evidently to be most serious and determined. If so, unless the elements again disappoint them, it must be a terrible kind of opposition indeed that can prevent them from accomplishing the first part of their design; and if they land, who shall prophesy the scenes that are to follow? But whether they come or not, things continuing to proceed in their present train, must end, at no remote period, in convulsion, probably revolution. It seems to me the duty of each young man especially, seriously to think and make up his mind as to what he ought to do in the approach and the reality of such an event. XXIII. TO HIS PARENTS. Chichester, July 13, 1798. HONORED PARENTS,-I wish I could compensate for so long a silence by communicating something that should give you great satisfaction; or at least something that should be new. A want of this, mixing itself with my antipathy to writing letters, and my disposition to procrastinate, is always a principal cause of my neglect in this particular-a neglect which I feel quite certain it would be unjust to ascribe to a want of affection or friendship, though indeed I cannot deny that it may have that appearance. I have sometimes thought I would write to no one till I could tell something extraordinary. I think I will therefore tell nothing about my mind till I can announce a completed revolution there; till every unworthy habit be melted away, and every conscientious principle in powerful operation. It would be useless to detail the catalogue of defects, and quite unnecessary to enumerate intended reforms. The revolutions of the world often admonish me that the mind of a reflective man ought, in respect of changes, to be beforehand with the world,-to have first achieved each important reform within itself, and to be able to say to other men, " Follow me." The events of this neighborhood are but quite of the common kind. Alternate alarms of the coming of the French, and ridicule of those alarms when past; the parade of soldiers, and arms, and drums, and loyalty, and fashion, contrasted with complaints of declining trade, an enormous pressure of taxes, the wan and hopeless looks of poverty, execration of the government and governors, and sighs for a revolution. I forget the precise time of hay-harvest in the North; here it has been over some weeks, and had a fine dry season. The corn fields are becoming yellowish. There is a large quantity of the smaller kinds of fruit, such as gooseberries, cherries, &c. ; no considerable allowance, however, has fallen to my share. The congregation here remains almost at a stand. Another member of the society, an aged woman, died about the time that I wrote my last letter. A whole view of the circumstances of the place strikes with an influence of the most bleak and chilly kind, on a mind in itself too cold, and which needs the directly opposite extreme of stimulation and fire. Yet in whatever manner I feel, my public addresses are not, I think, particularly defective in point of animation. Vastly remote from methodistic violence, I yet think I cannot be charged with dulness. As to being in any great or considerable degree useful, it is a thing quite out of the question: I never conceive any such hope. In this town the persons that concern themselves any way about religion, seem to me to fall into two classes;—one who regard only a farce of forms and ceremonies, and what are called decorums. These are devout worshippers of gowns and bands, and the whole ecclesiastical mummery, and think it a most profane thing to appear in a pulpit in any other color than hallowed black. . . . . And another class who have zealously adopted a few peculiar phrases and notions; some of them proper, some cant, some unintelligible, and some absurd. They only want to have these repeated with heat and positiveness an indefinite number of times, with occasional damnatory clauses for the edification of such as happen to think otherwise, and they are satisfied. If a man has discarded, or perhaps never learnt, the accustomed theological diction, and speaks in the general language of good sense, as he would ɔn any other subject, they do not like his sentiments, even though accordant with their own ;-his language and his thoughts are all pagan; he offers sacrifice with strange fire. I sometimes fall into profound musings on the state of this great world, on the nature and the destinies of man, on the subject of the question "What is truth?" The whole hemisphere of contemplation appears inexpressibly strange and mysterious. It is cloud pursuing cloud, forest after forest, and Alps upon Alps! It is in vain to declaim against scepticism. I feel with an emphasis of conviction, and wonder, and regret, that almost all things are enveloped in shade, that many things are covered with thickest darkness, that the number of things to which certainty belongs is small. I hope to enjoy "the sunshine of the other world." One of the very few things that appear to me not doubtful, is the truth of Christianity in general; some of the evidences of which I have lately seen most ably stated by Archdeacon Paley in his book on the subject. I should be perfectly in health but for some kind of complaint in my eyes, which gives me some apprehension. I have felt something of it ever since last summer or autumn, when it was caused by walking late in the evening, in the damp air of a shady retreat. . . . . I very often bathe and swim in an inlet of the sea, which comes up within two miles of the town. I have persevered in learning to swim, and should now be but little afraid of the pits and rivers in your neighborhood. . . . . I did not suppose that my father's remarks and sentiments required a distinct and formal reply. I am always convinced of the sincere benevolence that dictates them, always feel that they have a claim to attention and to gratitude, and am always happy to adopt them as my own, when my judgment perceives their justice. XXIV. TO HIS PARENTS. Chichester, Nov. 19, 1798. HONORED PARENTS,-I am not insensible of the value of that kind attention of Providence which still prevents me from having to communicate to you, and from hearing from you, any disastrous intelligence. I can indeed almost wonder, when I consider what a thing is life, that I retain it thus through lengthened months and years, and when I consider how still more frail is health, that I have to tell you I still possess its utmost vigor, excepting only in the case of my eyes. .... What may be the general state of religious societies in England, I am utterly ignorant. Not a particle of that kind of intelligence seems to circulate down to this coast. I have no hope of any extensive prevaence of true religion without the interference of angelic or some other extraordinary and yet unknown agency to direct its energies, and conquer the vast combination of obstruction and hostility that opposes it. An amazing fact is, that this hostility has hitherto been mainly successful. The triumphs of religion have been most limited and small, those of evil almost infinite. We see the melancholy result of an experiment of eighteen hundred years, the whole Christian era. This result compels me to conclude that religion is utterly incompetent to reform the world, till it is armed with some new and most mighty powers; till it appears in a new and last dispensation. Men are the same they always were; and, therefore, till some such wonderful event take place, their affections will be commanded by sense in opposition to faith, by earth in preference to heaven. The same causes operating, it were absurd to expect different effects. My melancholy musings on the state of the world have been much consoled by the famous maxim, "Whatever is, is right." Yes, I believe that the whole system taken together is the best possible is absolutely good: and that all the evil that ever has taken place, or that now prevails, was strictly necessary to that ultimate good which the Father of all intends. Believing that He has in view an end infinitely and perfectly good, I must believe that all things which take place among his creatures are means, proceeding in an undeviating line towards that end, and that, in decreeing the end, he decreed also the means. As nothing can take place beyond the sphere of his power, nothing can take place against his will; therefore the evils, the wickedness of mankind, are not against his sovereign will. Nothing is contingent; all evils are foreseen by him, and he permits them; but he would not permit them if something else would better answer his final purposes, inasmuch as he chooses the best possible means to accomplish his end; to suppose otherwise would be to suppose that the great work might have been done better. He, from the beginning, chose that all things should come to pass as they have done, as they do, and as they will hereafter; otherwise something must have come to pass either without his knowledge or against his will. All the events of the world, all the actions of mankind, have been a correct chain of causes and consequences, up to the first causes; these first causes were all formed and fixed by God, with a perfect foresight of all the consequences, and he formed and fixed these causes in order to produce these very consequences. If sin be traced up to its cause, that cause will be found to have been—the nature and the state of man; but this cause was precisely so fixed by the Creator, and evidently with a determination that this fatal consequence should follow; for he fixed it so that he saw this consequence most certainly would follow. He who fixed the first great moving causes appointed all their effects to the end of the world. "Whatever is, is right." Thus, regarding God as strictly the cause of all things, I am led to consider all things as working his high will; and to believe that there is neither more nor less evil in the world than he saw accurately necessary toward that ultimate happiness to which he is training, in various manners, all his creatures. In this view, too, I can sometimes commit myself to his hands with great complacency, certain |