ys talking of what is amiss in
others, and very sudden and severe in judging them, but very proud and
confident in himself, disdaining even the smallest blame. Would you get
into favor with him, you must flatter him at every word; and you will
please him best by doing it grossly and to his face, for he is quite
used to praise: he has long lived among those who look up to him as
their patron, or gape at him as their principal wit, or glory in him as
their chief songster, possibly as the chairman of their drinking club,
and as their merry leader in debauchery.

To all these sins he adds that of being the decided enemy of every
religious man. Is the gospel preached at his very door, he stands in
the front rank of its enemies; he denies its efficacy, makes a joke of
its doctrines, reviles its followers, and is the avowed hinderer of
its progress. Christianity, indeed, is against him, and therefore it
is no wonder that he is against Christianity. Hence it is, that the
religion of every man around him, however pure and excellent, if it is
but zealous and fervent, is declared, without distinction, to be mere
hypocrisy, enthusiasm, bigotry, and cant.

But let us look a little also to the various _consequences_ of his
life of sin. Who can trace a thousandth part of the miseries which
have arisen even from one single source; I mean from the levity and
inconsideration which have made one leading feature in his character?
Who can calculate the effects of all those evil principles which he
has scattered at random, reaching even to distant places and
generations? Who can calculate the mischief which he may have caused
even in one of his light convivial hours? View the inscription on that
gravestone, which is now almost overgrown with thorns. Ah, it is the
name of an old companion, an ale-house friend, who once used to sing
with him, in one joyful chorus, "the praises of the flowing bowl," and
who thus was encouraged in those habits of intemperance which led to
that untimely grave.

Let us open one other source of no less painful reflection. Behold
that miserable female, once the gay partner of his guilty pleasures,
whom if he has not been the first to seduce, he has at least carried
on and confirmed in a life of sin, and whom he has left afterwards to
sink in want, to grow loathsome through disease, and to become a
nuisance to the village or the town. He has helped to ruin but not to
deliver her; he has soon left her to the tender