e opinion about it. Boerhaave, speaking of this
very declaration of our Saviour, "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust
after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart," and
understanding it, as we do, to contain an injunction to lay the check
upon the thoughts, was wont to say that "our Saviour knew mankind better
than Socrates." Hailer, who has recorded this saying of Boerhaave, adds
to it the following remarks of his own:--(Letters to his Daughter.) "It
did not escape the observation of our Saviour that the rejection of
any evil thoughts was the best defence against vice: for when a
debauched person fills his imagination with impure pictures, the
licentious ideas which he recalls fail not to stimulate his desires with
a degree of violence which he cannot resist. This will be followed by
gratification, unless some external obstacle should prevent him from the
commission of a sin which he had internally resolved on." "Every moment
of time," says our author, "that is spent in meditations upon sin
increases the power of the dangerous object which has possessed our
imagination." I suppose these reflections will be generally assented to.

III. Thirdly, had a teacher of morality been asked concerning a general
principle of conduct, and for a short rule of life; and had he
instructed the person who consulted him, "constantly to refer his
actions to what he believed to be the will of his Creator, and
constantly to have in view not his own interest and gratification alone,
but the happiness and comfort of those about him," he would have been
thought, I doubt not, in any age of the world, and in any, even the most
improved state of morals, to have delivered a judicious answer; because,
by the first direction, he suggested the only motive which acts steadily
and uniformly, in sight and out of sight, in familiar occurrences and
under pressing temptations; and in the second he corrected what of all
tendencies in the human character stands most in need of correction,
selfishness, or a contempt of other men's conveniency and satisfaction.
In estimating the value of a moral rule, we are to have regard not only
to the particular duty, but the general spirit; not only to what it
directs us to do, but to the character which a compliance with its
direction is likely to form in us. So, in the present instance, the rule
here recited will never fail to make him who obeys it considerate not only
of the rights, but of the feeli