But, although no opportunity should be lost, of making such references to the Table, in order to give his pupils a facility in naming and classifying sentiments and actions, yet the teacher should ever bear distinctly in mind, that these are but subsidiary means of attaining our great end, and not the end itself. The grand object should be, the formation of a habit of referring our own emotions and actions to their proper source; a habit of constantly asking ourselves, "Is this right, or wrong?" A good moral teacher, then, will be continually on the watch for opportunities of leading his pupils to put such questions to themselves, and will consider the judgement they may be called on to exercise, as to others, as chiefly useful, in so far as it leads to this happy result.

The Table of Virtues is not offered, either as complete, or as classified in the best possible manner. In both respects, it is highly probable that it is imperfect. In future editions, should this work be found sufficiently useful to merit such an honor, it is to be hoped that it may be improved; and, with that view, the author will be happy to avail himself of the suggestions of practical teachers and others, who may think it worthy of notice. Meantime, however, it may be observed, that, probably, every attempt at classification will be found liable to some objection. In the present, it is readily granted, that, although there is a great convenience in referring the duties to the heads under which they stand, for the sake of easy reference, yet, in fact, ALL our duties may practically be referred to of them. To ourselves, because every one is bound, both by interest and duty, diligently to seek the highest improvement of which his nature is capable; to God, because this is the great purpose for which he has endowed us with such valuable faculties; to society, because no one can be neutral, but must, by his influence and example, either prove the source of good or evil to the community. But still, it is believed, it will be found, that all, or most, of the virtues and vices in the Table, will have a greater bearing towards the class under which it is arranged, than to either of the others.

any

EXPLANATION OF THE TERMS IN THE TABLE.

I. Duties to God.

1. Faith.-Unbelief.-The word faith has many meanings. Here, it signifies, believing in a great and good Being, who made us, continually protects us, and gives us every thing that we possess. Unbelief is a crime, because every one may and ought to know that there is a God; and because many of our duties cannot be properly performed, unless we believe in His existence. For instance, we can neither feel gratitude for His favors, nor resignation to His will; and without these and other virtues, there is no happiness.

2. Veneration.-Heedlessness; slavish dread, or superstitious fear.-Veneration is the feeling we experience towards the great and good. God is its highest object. It desires to find out excellence, and to repose on it. It renders self, lowly, humble, and submissive. Heedlessness here refers to a total want of thought of the Supreme Being. The kind of dread or fear, alluded to, is not that salutary fear, which is derived from a knowledge of our guilt; but that, which arises from mistaken views of the character of God.

Numbers three and four require no explanation.

5. Confidence.-Distrust.-The former relates to the presence, the latter, to the absence, of that firm reliance, which all should repose in the unremitting kindness and watchful care of our Heavenly Parent.

6. Resignation.- Querulousness, despondency, fear of death.-Resignation is that calm state of mind, arising from the confidence described in the last article. Querulousness is a habit of mournful complaint, always more or less connected with the notion, that we are hardly or unjustly dealt with. Some otherwise good people indulge in this habit, under an idea that it renders them interesting, forgetful that it implies both ingratitude and disobedience to the will of God. "And it is to be feared, that many pious people cherish gloomy views of life, both among

themselves and their children, because they think it necessary to wean the heart from the pleasures and possessions of this world. They speak of it habitually, therefore, as a vale of tears, a path of thorns and briars, through which we must pass, in our journey to another world. This is, certainly, an erroneous view of life, and is the fruitful source of many evils. It disgusts the young and the cheerful with religion and religious people, who become associated, in their minds, with moody dulness, or revolting gloom. But the effect of these views, upon persons of a melancholy temperament, is even worse. They are apt to sink deep into the mind, and, coinciding with the tendencies of the heart, to overshadow the whole being with the dismal mist of habitual despondency. In such cases, insanity is the frequent result. And where this does not happen, where the mind is sustained by religious hope, still, how desolate is the existence of that individual, who is trained to look upon this world only as a scene of sorrow and trial! And, beside, is it not a false, unprofitable, and impious, view of existence? Has God given this world to us, as a curse? There is, doubtless, a great deal of misery in the world; but it is chiefly brought upon us by our own misconduct. And, moreover, the balance of pleasure infinitely outweighs the pain."-Despondency is the same evil habit, indulged to a greater extent, and connected with the idea, that our real or imaginary sufferings are permanent. The first approaches of both should be checked and discountenanced. The fear of death, here alluded to, is totally unconnected with the retributions of eternity, but intimately connected with the distrust of our Heavenly Father, mentioned above. It arises from a fear of the pangs supposed to attend the dissolution of the connexion between the body and soul, and a sort of indistinct notion, that man, himself, not his mere shell, is deposited in the grave. Such expressions as, King of Terrors, the cold grave, the dark grave, &c., refer to such feelings. Blair thus alludes to them, in his beautiful poem :

*Parley's Fireside Education.'

"The grave, dread thing!

Men shiver when thou 'rt named; Nature, appalled,
Shakes off her wonted firmness. Ah! how dark
Thy long-extended realms and rueful wastes,

Where nought but silence reigns, and night, dark night !” Such sentiments are false and injurious to happiness, and directly the opposite of confidence in the power and goodness of God, and cheerful resignation to His will. Young, in his 'Night Thoughts,' takes the true view of the subject: "Why start at Death? Where is he? Death, arrived, Is past; not come, or gone, he 's never here. Ere hope, sensation fails; black-boding man Receives, not suffers, Death's tremendous blow. The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave, The deep, damp vault, the darkness, and the worm ; These are the bugbears of a Winter's eve, The terrors of the living, not the dead. Imagination's fool, and error's wretch,

Man makes a death, which Nature never made ;
Then, on the point of his own fancy, falls,
And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.'

Night IV.

A late popular writer observes, that, "In the whole course of our observation, there is not so misrepresented and abused a personage as Death. He has been vilified, as the cause of anguish, consternation, and despair; but these are things that appertain, not unto death, but unto life. How strange a paradox is this! We love the distemper, and loathe the remedy; preferring the fiercest buffetings of the hurricane to the tranquillity of the harbor. The poet has lent his fictions, the painter his colors, the orator his tropes, to portray death as the grand destroyer, who, for a perishable state, gives us that which is eternal! Can he be styled the enemy, who is the best friend only of the best, who never deserts them at their utmost need, and whose friendship proves the most valuable to those who live the longest! Can he be termed the prince of phantoms and of shades, who destroys that which is transient and temporary, to establish that which is real and fixed! And what are the mournful escutcheons, the sable trophies, and the melancholy insignia with which we surround him, the sepulchral gloom, the mouldering carcass, and the slimy worm? These, indeed, are

the idle fears, and empty terrors, not of the dead, but of the living. The dark domain of death, we dread, indeed, to enter, but we ought rather to dread the ruggedness of some of the roads that lead to it; but, if they are rugged, they are short, and it is only those that are smooth, that are wearisome and long. But perhaps he summons us too soon from the feast of life. Be it so; if the exchange be not for the better, it is not his fault, but our own.Or he summons us late; the call is a reprieve rather than a sentence; for who would wish to sit at the board, when he can no longer partake of the banquet, or to live on to pain, when he has long been dead to pleasure? Tyrants can sentence their victims to death, but how much more dreadful would be their power, could they sentence them to life? Life is the gaoler of the soul in this filthy prison, and its only deliverer is Death; what we call death, is a passport to life. True wisdom thanks Death for what he takes, and still more for what he brings. Let us, then, like sentinels, be ready, because we are uncertain, and calm, because we are prepared. There is nothing formidable about death, but the consequences of it, and these, we ourselves can regulate and control. The shortest life is long enough, if it lead to a better, and the longest life is too short, if it do not."

"And what is death?

Death has been styled the king of terrors. But to whom? To none, surely, except the wicked and superstitious. To the disciples of enlightened piety,—the followers after righteousness and truth,' death is really the highest happiness.

6

"Man dives in death, in brighter worlds to rise;
The grave's the subterranean road to bliss.'

"But what is death? Death is an exemption from the toils, the perplexities, the various ills, that 'flesh is heir to. It is the enlargement of the soul from the narrow limits of mortality; from the oppressive restraints of an existence.circumscribing its enjoyments, its observation, and intelligence, to the bounded confines of a single locality, a mere point. Death is the affranchisement of the soul from this straitened state of inadequate enjoy

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