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DUTIES PECULIARLY CHRISTIAN.

[Part VI.

interest of all men, is not usually felt by the many to be one ofthose immediate and pressing wants which cannot be neglected.

Many have lived, and many continue to live, in utter neglectof religion. The more, and the longer, too, men live in theneglect of religious duty, and without the benefit of religious in-struction, the less inclined are they to seek its privileges and esti-mate their value. By long habits of inattention, neglect, and in-difference, men may become entirely insensible to the claims ofreligion, and may live and die almost as regardless of the con-cerns of the life to come, as the beasts that perish. This istrue of no very small number who live in Christian lands, andmust be almost universally true of those countries, which still sitin “ the shadow and darkness ” of false religion. No Christian,alive to the destination which awaits all men beyond the grave,who believes that there is a heaven of infinite and unchangeablehappiness, and a hell of infinite and never-ending despair, cansuppose his duty suitably performed, when he leaves men to pro-ceed thus on the broad road to destruction, without making asingle effort to save them from the end to which they are inev-itably advancing. It is no sufficient ground on which to excuseourselves from performing this duty, that persons in this situationare insensible to their danger. If our houses were burning overus, we should not be the less entitled to commiseration and re-lief, because we might be weighed down by the slumbers of mid-night, and insensible to the danger impending over us. In suchcircumstances, it would be the height of cruelty to refuse orneglect to rouse and rescue us from the falling ruins of our con-suming dwellings. No breach of charity can be so great, as torefuse to listen to the spiritual necessities, and consult the spiritualinterests, of mankind.

3. Christian charity requires us to manifest a suitable and con-scientious regard to the reputation of others. An establishedcharacter for prudence, sound discretion, and good judgmentand integrity, joined with suitable acquirements and skill in thewalk of life which we have chosen to pursue, can only be ob-tained by long and painful efforts, and by persevering labor inacquiring those habits of mind and capacities for action, whichare indispensable to usefulness. Difficult of attainment originally,