Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a LadyChapone, Mrs. (Hester)
Religion
Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Lady
Chapone, Mrs. (Hester)
Women -- Education; Young women -- Conduct of life
ourselves with believing, that it is what _mortal eye hath not seen, nor
ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive_.
The crown of all our joys will be to know that we are secure of
possessing them _for ever_--What a transporting idea!
My dearest child! can you reflect on all these things, and not feel the
most earnest longings after immortality? Do not all other views and
desires seem mean and trifling when compared with this? And does not
your inmost heart resolve that this shall be the chief and constant
object of its wishes and pursuit, through the whole course of your life?
If you are not insensible to that desire of happiness, which seems woven
into our nature, you cannot surely be unmoved by the prospect of such a
transcendent degree of it; and that, continued to all eternity--perhaps
continually increasing. You cannot but dread the forfeiture of such an
inheritance as the most insupportable evil! Remember then--remember the
conditions on which alone it can be obtained. God will not give to vice,
to carelessness, or sloth, the prize he has proposed to virtue. You have
every help that can animate your endeavours:--You have written laws to
direct you--the example of Christ and his disciples to encourage
you--the most awakening motives to engage you--and you have, besides,
the comfortable promise of constant assistance from the Holy Spirit, if
you diligently and sincerely pray for it. O, my dear child! let not all
this mercy be lost upon you; but give your attention to this your only
important concern, and accept, with profound gratitude, the inestimable
advantages that are thus affectionately offered you.
Though the four gospels are each of them a narration of the life,
sayings, and death of Christ; yet, as they are not exactly alike, but
some circumstances and sayings, omitted in one, are recorded in another,
you must make yourself perfectly mistress of them all.
The ACTS of the holy Apostles, endowed with the Holy Ghost, and
authorized by their divine Master, come next in order to be read.
Nothing can be more interesting and edifying, than the history of their
actions--of the piety, zeal, and courage, with which they preached the
glad tidings of salvation--and of the various exertions of the wonderful
powers conferred on them by the Holy Spirit, for the confirmation of
their mission.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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