PART FOURTH.

PERSONAL DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS, OR THEDUTIES OF MEN TO THEMSELVES.

Our duties to ourselves, well denominated by an Englishwriter, “personal morality,”* maybe comprised under sevendivisions. I. The preservation of life and health, including adiscussion of suicide. II. The improvement of the corporealfaculties. III. Cultivation of the powers of the mind generally,including discipline of the temper and passions, and attention tomanners and personal habits. IV. Cultivation of a strong, deli-cate, and permanent sense of duty. V. Cultivating personalreligion, and the personal virtues. VI. Cultivating a delicatesense of honor. VII. Guarding ourselves against prejudices,antipathies, prepossessions, &c.

CHAPTER I.

THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE AND HEALTH, INCLUDINGA DISCUSSION OF SUICIDE.

If there is any difficulty in putting our duty to preserve lifeand health beyond all controversy, it arises from its being soplain, that there is no medium of proof by which to make it moremanifest. The Christian religion looks upon all our capacities ofimprovement and usefulness, as so many talents intrusted to ouradministration, and for the use of which we are to be held re-sponsible.] And that our life is the talent of superlative value,

* Estlin’s Lectures on Moral Philosophy, No. VII.t Matt. xxv. 14 - 30; Luke xix. 12 - 27.