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PERSONAL DUTIES.

[Part IV.

for it makes life a discipline of goodness, creates new hopeswhen all earthly hopes vanish, and throws over the decay, thedestruction of existence, the most gorgeous of all lights ; awak-ens life even in death, and from corruption and decay calls upbeauty and divinity.” Again he says, “ Religion, whether natu-ral or revealed, has always the same beneficial influence on themind. In youth, in health and prosperity, it awakens feelings ofgratitude and sublime love, and purifies at the same time that itexalts ; but it is in misfortune, in sickness, in age, that its effectsare most truly and beneficially felt; when submission in faith, andhumble trust in the divine will, from duties become pleasures, un-decaying sources of consolation ; then it creates powers whichwere believed to be extinct, and gives a freshness to the mindwhich was supposed to have passed away for ever, but which isnow renovated as an immortal hope. Its influence outlives allearthly enjoyments, and becomes stronger as the organs decayand the frame dissolves ; it appears as that evening star of lightin the horizon of life, which, we are sure, is to become in an-other season a morning star, and it throws its radiance throughthe gloom and shadow of death.” * Such are the sentiments,and such the result of the experience and reflection, of men ofthe most cultivated understandings, and of the most enlarged ac-quaintance with human affairs.

The impression so generally prevailing, that sound religioussentiment is a matter of comparative indifference, or, at most,of inconsiderable importance, is one of the besetting sins anderrors of the age and times in which we live. In ancient times,religious belief was regulated by enactments of the legislature,and enforced by the civil magistrate ; and a man’s faith, still morethan his practice, was decided upon and adjusted by the tribunalsof criminal jurisdiction. In those times, a man’s religious faithwas imposed on him as imperatively as the law, which prescribedhis civil duties, or which regulated the title by which he held hisestate. No one can wish for the return of those times, and, iftheir return was possible, every good man must deprecate theirapproach as one of the greatest possible calamities. But, by the

* Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher, by Sir Hum-phrey Davy, pp. 23, 20(5.