igion,
I was not convinced by it. I remember Mr. Burke, speaking of the
English, who were so humane at home, and whom he unjustly accused of
wanting humanity in India, says, "that the humanity of Britain is a
humanity of points and parallels." Surely the religion of the gentlemen
in question is not a less geographical distinction.

This error, I conceive, arises from religion being too much considered
as a mere institution of decorum, of convention, of society; and not as
an institution founded on the condition of human nature, a covenant of
mercy for repairing the evils which sin has produced. It springs from
the want of a conviction that Christianity is an individual as well as
general concern; that religion is a personal thing, previous to its
being a matter of example; that a man is not infallibly saved or lost as
a portion of any family, or any church, or any community; but that, as
he is individually responsible, he must be individually brought to a
deep and humbling sense of his own personal wants, without taking any
refuge in the piety he may see around him, of which he will have no
benefit, if he be no partaker.

I regretted, even for inferior reasons, the little distinction which was
paid to this sacred day. To say nothing of the elevating views which the
soul acquires from devoting itself to its proper object; the man of
business, methinks, should rejoice in its return; the politician should
welcome its appearance, not only as a rest from anxiety and labor, but
as an occasion of cooling and quieting the mind, of softening its
irritation, of allaying its ferment, and thus restoring the repaired
faculties and invigorated spirits to the demands of the succeeding week,
in a frame of increased aptitude for meeting its difficulties and
encountering its duties.

The first person whom I visited was a good-natured, friendly man, whom I
had occasionally seen in the North. As I had no reason to believe that
he was religious, in the true sense of the word, I had no intention of
looking for a wife in his family. I, however, thought it not amiss to
associate a little with persons of different descriptions, that by a
wider range I might learn to correct my general judgment, as well as to
guide my particular pursuit. Nothing, it is true, would tempt me to
select a woman on whose pious dispositions I could not form a reasonable
dependence: yet to come at the reality of those dispositions was no easy
matter.

I had heard