e has so many
objections to every other person's mode of doing good, and so many
arguments to prove that her own is the best, that she appears less like
a benevolent lady than a chicaning attorney."

"Nothing," said I, "corrects this bustling bounty so completely, as when
it is mixed up with religion, I should rather say, as when it flows from
religion. This motive, so far from diminishing the energy, augments it;
but it cures the display, and converts the irritation into a principle.
It transfers the activity from the tongue to the heart. It is the only
sort of charity which 'blesses twice.' All charity, indeed, blesses the
receiver; but the blessing promised to the giver, I have sometimes
trembled to think, may be forfeited even by a generous mind, from
ostentation and parade in the manner, and want of purity in the motive."

"In Stanley's family," replied he, in a more serious tone, "I have met
with a complete refutation of that favorite maxim in the world, that
religion is a dull thing itself, and makes its professors gloomy and
morose. Charles! I have often frequented houses where pleasure was the
avowed object of idolatry. But to see the votaries of the 'reeling
goddess,' after successive nights passed in her temples! to see the
languor, the listlessness, the discontent--you would rather have taken
them for her victims than her worshipers. So little mental vivacity, so
little gayety of heart! In short, after no careless observations, I am
compelled to declare, that I never saw two forms less alike than those
of Pleasure and Happiness."

"Your testimony, Sir John," said I, "is of great weight in a case of
which you are so experienced a judge. What a different scene do we now
contemplate! Mr. Stanley seems to have diffused his own spirit through
the whole family. What makes his example of such efficacy is, that he
considers the Christian _temper_ as so considerable a part of
Christianity. This temper seems to imbue his whole soul, pervade his
whole conduct, and influence his whole conversation. I see every day
some fresh occasion to admire his candor, his humility, his constant
reference, not as a topic of discourse, but as a principle of conduct,
to the gospel as the standard by which actions are to be weighed. His
conscientious strictness of speech, his serious reproof of calumnies,
his charitable construction of every case which has two sides; 'his
simplicity and godly sincerity;' his rule of referring all even